January 5, 2007
2006 e Spending up 25%
According to comscore networks, etailers enjoyed more than $100 billion in sales in 2006. Part of that was credited to a strong holiday season. Comscore also reported that holiday spending was above $600 million on 12 individual days in the holiday season stretch which is a new record.
Shoppers waited later than ever this year, but this could be due to better package delivery, or at least the perception of better delivery on the consumer’s part.
Comscore stated that e-commerce sales growth was driven by big-ticket and popular gift categories including jewelry and watches (up 67%), video games (64%) video game consoles (63%), event tickets (55%), and consumer electronics (39%).
Sales for year 2002 were only 10 billion, so this represents a doubling every 3 years.
Neilsen Research also reported that 79% of consumers bought something online in 2006. Not surprising then, is their report that Internet advertising spending is up 50%. “As consumers continue to make the Web a part of their daily media mix, so do advertisers," said Carolyn Creekmore, senior director of media analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings. “Some of the segments that represent the largest share of advertising online - including financial services, retail and telecommunications - also experienced the greatest increase in ad spending, year over year."
According to comscore networks, etailers enjoyed more than $100 billion in sales in 2006. Part of that was credited to a strong holiday season. Comscore also reported that holiday spending was above $600 million on 12 individual days in the holiday season stretch which is a new record.
Shoppers waited later than ever this year, but this could be due to better package delivery, or at least the perception of better delivery on the consumer’s part.
Comscore stated that e-commerce sales growth was driven by big-ticket and popular gift categories including jewelry and watches (up 67%), video games (64%) video game consoles (63%), event tickets (55%), and consumer electronics (39%).
Sales for year 2002 were only 10 billion, so this represents a doubling every 3 years.
Neilsen Research also reported that 79% of consumers bought something online in 2006. Not surprising then, is their report that Internet advertising spending is up 50%. “As consumers continue to make the Web a part of their daily media mix, so do advertisers," said Carolyn Creekmore, senior director of media analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings. “Some of the segments that represent the largest share of advertising online - including financial services, retail and telecommunications - also experienced the greatest increase in ad spending, year over year."
December 4, 2006
Emarketer predicted ecommerce sales would grow by 22% this holiday season to 24 billion dollars and fourth quarter sales would reach 33 billion. The National Retail Federation believes brick and mortal retail holiday sales will grow 5 percent to $457 billion which is slightly lower than last years 5% increase. Comscore just reported that Total online retail spending reached $11.7 billion through December 1st.
Comscore also reports that although retail e-commerce spending rose at a rate of 24 percent versus last year, retail site visitation is growing at only about 12%. They found that visitors to retail sites have grown 13 percent while the total number of visits is slightly less at 12 %, showing they are spending a little more each visit this holiday season.
The higher growth in online sales is thought to be due to shoppers familiarity and degree of comfort with online shopping. Items showing strong online sales this year are event tickets, electronics and books.
Zdnet blog post http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?cat=27 says Google's marketshare continues at 50%. That means Google is going to drive much of this year's online holiday shopping.
December 4, 2006
What’s the Value of a Brand if No one Sees it?
I just watched an interview on business television with the CEO of the world’s top hotel chain. He emphasized the importance of brand, especially in his market, luxury hotel accommodations. He didn’t say sales and he failed to mention marketing reach. He was putting the cart before the horse and given that many of the people watching were investors, I’m surprised that sales and market reach weren’t his stated choices.
Even stranger, is that he said that new markets in China and India were very important. These markets are unaware of this chain’s brand so more branding wouldn’t provide the sales generation he is hoping for. What is perhaps more important is access to consumers, yet he seemed to indicate that reaching audiences around the world was not an issue. I haven’t looked at the hotel chain’s financials but right now I’m thinking that their corporate motto is “money is no object.”
It’s a company with a huge advertising budget, but they’re spending it on mass marketing efforts. They don’t even do organic search engine promotion. I know from experience with other hotels, that they could be reaching ten times the number of consumers via search engines, and not with Adwords advertising. Adwords is too expensive. Although a careful Adwords campaign can generate profit, organic optimization is much more powerful. Adwords advertising has the unfortunate side effect of encouraging undifferentiated advertising thus pushing the brand towards being just another price-based commodity. Adwords ads force everyone into the same keyword pool and ads are too short say anything but the simplest statements like “hotels in Boston: Luxury Accommodation, cheap rates, discounts available.” How many luxury hotel marketers want to get into that mess? This hotel chain only advertises for searches for their hotel brand name. The rest of the millions of searches, they’ve given up on.
This chain is a dominant chain in the US and around the world, but I’ll be honest, their brand doesn’t say quality to me. They may emphasize plush carpet and antique furniture, but I can’t imagine this is a brand position that appeals to business or personal travel consumers today.
However, whatever their brand positioning is, and whatever amount of effort they put into establishing that brand in growing markets, they can’t do it without reaching the market first. The market in India and China may be receptive to their stiff, traditional branding, however reaching that market may require a significant amount of advertising. This hotel may be ignoring the Internet, but we all know that web users are very high quality prospects. If the hotel were to gain high rankings in www.google.in or www.baidu.com in China, they would have excellent reach to consumers who need accommodations now. Searchers are well targeted prospects and have an urgency. A general brand value proposition may not capitalize on that well.
Links in the free or organic search results section have the luxury of being able to say more and to say something unique to each type of visitor. That is much more brand-friendly than you can stuff into the 25 to 35 character limit Adwords spots.
SEO is thought of as being very brand unfriendly, but it may just be challenging the brand to evolve and be more, and truly reach out to reach its potential. There’s no taking away the importance of web search engines. People know they can search for the exact hotel room in the exact location with just the features and amenities they like. If this hotel chain builds its brand in blanket “one style fits all” fashion, it is in denial of the fact that consumers are empowered by search engines. If your brand is exposed in any way on the Internet and is not customized, it can actually erode your brand. People in India, China and the US all have different tastes so customizing the brand must be done anyway.
An organic SEO campaign on the other hand, can take that generalized brand and present in a customized way to each type of visitor from search engines. That’s a lot of visitors too. SEO has proven to increase a site’s user friendliness and sales conversion.
Whatever way you want to slice your brand and present it, someone has to be there to see it. If your site isn’t present in the search engine rankings, it is missing out on being on the top real estate on the Internet. If your competitors are there ranking high, they are reaching the best qualified prospects at the perfect time in the buying cycle. Increasingly, that perfect time is right now, when customers are searching. They’re all pumped up on Google, thinking they can have whatever they want at the right price. By presenting your brand in a customized way, you can present the features and benefits they want so they’ll forget about price. We have clients that do cross sales and up sells beautifully. The prospect gets caught up in the site.
Even if the prospect leaves and does another search, our client’s sites are always present in the listings. Over and over, they see the clients brand in a new way and if they don’t find something they like at a competitor’s site, they will come back to our client’s site to dig deeper. So the search engine rankings create first exposure (reach) and familiarity (impressions). If the brand image itself is of top quality, you have the formula for incredible success, and a brand value multiplied by ten.
I just watched an interview on business television with the CEO of the world’s top hotel chain. He emphasized the importance of brand, especially in his market, luxury hotel accommodations. He didn’t say sales and he failed to mention marketing reach. He was putting the cart before the horse and given that many of the people watching were investors, I’m surprised that sales and market reach weren’t his stated choices.
Even stranger, is that he said that new markets in China and India were very important. These markets are unaware of this chain’s brand so more branding wouldn’t provide the sales generation he is hoping for. What is perhaps more important is access to consumers, yet he seemed to indicate that reaching audiences around the world was not an issue. I haven’t looked at the hotel chain’s financials but right now I’m thinking that their corporate motto is “money is no object.”
It’s a company with a huge advertising budget, but they’re spending it on mass marketing efforts. They don’t even do organic search engine promotion. I know from experience with other hotels, that they could be reaching ten times the number of consumers via search engines, and not with Adwords advertising. Adwords is too expensive. Although a careful Adwords campaign can generate profit, organic optimization is much more powerful. Adwords advertising has the unfortunate side effect of encouraging undifferentiated advertising thus pushing the brand towards being just another price-based commodity. Adwords ads force everyone into the same keyword pool and ads are too short say anything but the simplest statements like “hotels in Boston: Luxury Accommodation, cheap rates, discounts available.” How many luxury hotel marketers want to get into that mess? This hotel chain only advertises for searches for their hotel brand name. The rest of the millions of searches, they’ve given up on.
This chain is a dominant chain in the US and around the world, but I’ll be honest, their brand doesn’t say quality to me. They may emphasize plush carpet and antique furniture, but I can’t imagine this is a brand position that appeals to business or personal travel consumers today.
However, whatever their brand positioning is, and whatever amount of effort they put into establishing that brand in growing markets, they can’t do it without reaching the market first. The market in India and China may be receptive to their stiff, traditional branding, however reaching that market may require a significant amount of advertising. This hotel may be ignoring the Internet, but we all know that web users are very high quality prospects. If the hotel were to gain high rankings in www.google.in or www.baidu.com in China, they would have excellent reach to consumers who need accommodations now. Searchers are well targeted prospects and have an urgency. A general brand value proposition may not capitalize on that well.
Links in the free or organic search results section have the luxury of being able to say more and to say something unique to each type of visitor. That is much more brand-friendly than you can stuff into the 25 to 35 character limit Adwords spots.
SEO is thought of as being very brand unfriendly, but it may just be challenging the brand to evolve and be more, and truly reach out to reach its potential. There’s no taking away the importance of web search engines. People know they can search for the exact hotel room in the exact location with just the features and amenities they like. If this hotel chain builds its brand in blanket “one style fits all” fashion, it is in denial of the fact that consumers are empowered by search engines. If your brand is exposed in any way on the Internet and is not customized, it can actually erode your brand. People in India, China and the US all have different tastes so customizing the brand must be done anyway.
An organic SEO campaign on the other hand, can take that generalized brand and present in a customized way to each type of visitor from search engines. That’s a lot of visitors too. SEO has proven to increase a site’s user friendliness and sales conversion.
Whatever way you want to slice your brand and present it, someone has to be there to see it. If your site isn’t present in the search engine rankings, it is missing out on being on the top real estate on the Internet. If your competitors are there ranking high, they are reaching the best qualified prospects at the perfect time in the buying cycle. Increasingly, that perfect time is right now, when customers are searching. They’re all pumped up on Google, thinking they can have whatever they want at the right price. By presenting your brand in a customized way, you can present the features and benefits they want so they’ll forget about price. We have clients that do cross sales and up sells beautifully. The prospect gets caught up in the site.
Even if the prospect leaves and does another search, our client’s sites are always present in the listings. Over and over, they see the clients brand in a new way and if they don’t find something they like at a competitor’s site, they will come back to our client’s site to dig deeper. So the search engine rankings create first exposure (reach) and familiarity (impressions). If the brand image itself is of top quality, you have the formula for incredible success, and a brand value multiplied by ten.
December 4, 2006
What’s the Value of a Brand if No one Sees it?
I just watched an interview on business television with the CEO of the world’s top hotel chain. He emphasized the importance of brand, especially in his market, luxury hotel accommodations. He didn’t say sales and he failed to mention marketing reach. He was putting the cart before the horse and given that many of the people watching were investors, I’m surprised that sales and market reach weren’t his stated choices.
Even stranger, is that he said that new markets in China and India were very important. These markets are unaware of this chain’s brand so more branding wouldn’t provide the sales generation he is hoping for. What is perhaps more important is access to consumers, yet he seemed to indicate that reaching audiences around the world was not an issue. I haven’t looked at the hotel chain’s financials but right now I’m thinking that their corporate motto is “money is no object.”
It’s a company with a huge advertising budget, but they’re spending it on mass marketing efforts. They don’t even do organic search engine promotion. I know from experience with other hotels, that they could be reaching ten times the number of consumers via search engines, and not with Adwords advertising. Adwords is too expensive. Although a careful Adwords campaign can generate profit, organic optimization is much more powerful. Adwords advertising has the unfortunate side effect of encouraging undifferentiated advertising thus pushing the brand towards being just another price-based commodity. Adwords ads force everyone into the same keyword pool and ads are too short say anything but the simplest statements like “hotels in Boston: Luxury Accommodation, cheap rates, discounts available.” How many luxury hotel marketers want to get into that mess? This hotel chain only advertises for searches for their hotel brand name. The rest of the millions of searches, they’ve given up on.
This chain is a dominant chain in the US and around the world, but I’ll be honest, their brand doesn’t say quality to me. They may emphasize plush carpet and antique furniture, but I can’t imagine this is a brand position that appeals to business or personal travel consumers today.
However, whatever their brand positioning is, and whatever amount of effort they put into establishing that brand in growing markets, they can’t do it without reaching the market first. The market in India and China may be receptive to their stiff, traditional branding, however reaching that market may require a significant amount of advertising. This hotel may be ignoring the Internet, but we all know that web users are very high quality prospects. If the hotel were to gain high rankings in www.google.in or www.baidu.com in China, they would have excellent reach to consumers who need accommodations now. Searchers are well targeted prospects and have an urgency. A general brand value proposition may not capitalize on that well.
Links in the free or organic search results section have the luxury of being able to say more and to say something unique to each type of visitor. That is much more brand-friendly than you can stuff into the 25 to 35 character limit Adwords spots.
SEO is thought of as being very brand unfriendly, but it may just be challenging the brand to evolve and be more, and truly reach out to reach its potential. There’s no taking away the importance of web search engines. People know they can search for the exact hotel room in the exact location with just the features and amenities they like. If this hotel chain builds its brand in blanket “one style fits all” fashion, it is in denial of the fact that consumers are empowered by search engines. If your brand is exposed in any way on the Internet and is not customized, it can actually erode your brand. People in India, China and the US all have different tastes so customizing the brand must be done anyway.
An organic SEO campaign on the other hand, can take that generalized brand and present in a customized way to each type of visitor from search engines. That’s a lot of visitors too. SEO has proven to increase a site’s user friendliness and sales conversion.
Whatever way you want to slice your brand and present it, someone has to be there to see it. If your site isn’t present in the search engine rankings, it is missing out on being on the top real estate on the Internet. If your competitors are there ranking high, they are reaching the best qualified prospects at the perfect time in the buying cycle. Increasingly, that perfect time is right now, when customers are searching. They’re all pumped up on Google, thinking they can have whatever they want at the right price. By presenting your brand in a customized way, you can present the features and benefits they want so they’ll forget about price. We have clients that do cross sales and up sells beautifully. The prospect gets caught up in the site.
Even if the prospect leaves and does another search, our client’s sites are always present in the listings. Over and over, they see the clients brand in a new way and if they don’t find something they like at a competitor’s site, they will come back to our client’s site to dig deeper. So the search engine rankings create first exposure (reach) and familiarity (impressions). If the brand image itself is of top quality, you have the formula for incredible success, and a brand value multiplied by ten.
I just watched an interview on business television with the CEO of the world’s top hotel chain. He emphasized the importance of brand, especially in his market, luxury hotel accommodations. He didn’t say sales and he failed to mention marketing reach. He was putting the cart before the horse and given that many of the people watching were investors, I’m surprised that sales and market reach weren’t his stated choices.
Even stranger, is that he said that new markets in China and India were very important. These markets are unaware of this chain’s brand so more branding wouldn’t provide the sales generation he is hoping for. What is perhaps more important is access to consumers, yet he seemed to indicate that reaching audiences around the world was not an issue. I haven’t looked at the hotel chain’s financials but right now I’m thinking that their corporate motto is “money is no object.”
It’s a company with a huge advertising budget, but they’re spending it on mass marketing efforts. They don’t even do organic search engine promotion. I know from experience with other hotels, that they could be reaching ten times the number of consumers via search engines, and not with Adwords advertising. Adwords is too expensive. Although a careful Adwords campaign can generate profit, organic optimization is much more powerful. Adwords advertising has the unfortunate side effect of encouraging undifferentiated advertising thus pushing the brand towards being just another price-based commodity. Adwords ads force everyone into the same keyword pool and ads are too short say anything but the simplest statements like “hotels in Boston: Luxury Accommodation, cheap rates, discounts available.” How many luxury hotel marketers want to get into that mess? This hotel chain only advertises for searches for their hotel brand name. The rest of the millions of searches, they’ve given up on.
This chain is a dominant chain in the US and around the world, but I’ll be honest, their brand doesn’t say quality to me. They may emphasize plush carpet and antique furniture, but I can’t imagine this is a brand position that appeals to business or personal travel consumers today.
However, whatever their brand positioning is, and whatever amount of effort they put into establishing that brand in growing markets, they can’t do it without reaching the market first. The market in India and China may be receptive to their stiff, traditional branding, however reaching that market may require a significant amount of advertising. This hotel may be ignoring the Internet, but we all know that web users are very high quality prospects. If the hotel were to gain high rankings in www.google.in or www.baidu.com in China, they would have excellent reach to consumers who need accommodations now. Searchers are well targeted prospects and have an urgency. A general brand value proposition may not capitalize on that well.
Links in the free or organic search results section have the luxury of being able to say more and to say something unique to each type of visitor. That is much more brand-friendly than you can stuff into the 25 to 35 character limit Adwords spots.
SEO is thought of as being very brand unfriendly, but it may just be challenging the brand to evolve and be more, and truly reach out to reach its potential. There’s no taking away the importance of web search engines. People know they can search for the exact hotel room in the exact location with just the features and amenities they like. If this hotel chain builds its brand in blanket “one style fits all” fashion, it is in denial of the fact that consumers are empowered by search engines. If your brand is exposed in any way on the Internet and is not customized, it can actually erode your brand. People in India, China and the US all have different tastes so customizing the brand must be done anyway.
An organic SEO campaign on the other hand, can take that generalized brand and present in a customized way to each type of visitor from search engines. That’s a lot of visitors too. SEO has proven to increase a site’s user friendliness and sales conversion.
Whatever way you want to slice your brand and present it, someone has to be there to see it. If your site isn’t present in the search engine rankings, it is missing out on being on the top real estate on the Internet. If your competitors are there ranking high, they are reaching the best qualified prospects at the perfect time in the buying cycle. Increasingly, that perfect time is right now, when customers are searching. They’re all pumped up on Google, thinking they can have whatever they want at the right price. By presenting your brand in a customized way, you can present the features and benefits they want so they’ll forget about price. We have clients that do cross sales and up sells beautifully. The prospect gets caught up in the site.
Even if the prospect leaves and does another search, our client’s sites are always present in the listings. Over and over, they see the clients brand in a new way and if they don’t find something they like at a competitor’s site, they will come back to our client’s site to dig deeper. So the search engine rankings create first exposure (reach) and familiarity (impressions). If the brand image itself is of top quality, you have the formula for incredible success, and a brand value multiplied by ten.
November 15, 2006
More than any other country, US companies have an awareness of International sales opportunities. That’s the reputation anyway. In reality, the US domestic market has been so lucrative that most US businesses don’t bother thinking about approaching foreign markets. The global economy has changed however and foreign markets are critical to future business viability.
One of those markets is Canada. Canada with its 33 million consumers is about 11% of the size of the US market and with Free Trade, the border is no longer a barrier. Canadians are familiar with US goods and receptive to American products. Canadians also share search engines. The usage of Google is even higher than in the US. A US company that is able to establish a business presence here can achieve substantial sales.
For northern US companies, such as New England-based companies, Canada is a great market. US firms might are learning to lower the advertising volume in approaching Canadians. With Canadians, it’s simple and straightforward. Present benefits and value without diversion and the trust factor will be high. Canadians search the Web for products and services in perhaps greater numbers than other nations, but they are more literal in their views. When they type something into the Google search engine, they mean what they say. Those keywords are golden. The words they use are already infused with branding meaning they’ve received from advertising. Yes, that commoditizes the keyword phrases they use, but that’s the way it is. If your Web site ranks for those phrases, you’ve got Canadian attention.
The Canadian approach is sometimes viewed with some humor, however Canadian values and culture are not lost on Americans. The attraction is the simplicity. It may seem hokey, but Canadians love hokey (not hockey) because it’s simple and trustworthy. A straight forward Web site with top Google rankings is gold. You can expect a flood of Canadian orders. With 33 Million buyers, how can that not be worth it?
The Canadian economy has been strong and Canadians have purchasing power and American goods have a branding value that Canadians respect. When you access the Canadian market, you have a decided branding advantage.
To market to Canadians, your Web site just needs to be accessible. If you’re not visible in Google, you’re not accessible. Some US companies won’t accept Canadian orders. They get a trickle of initial orders from Canada and face some import duties and then give up. They announce that no Canadian orders are accepted. That’s like turning down New York. Yes, there’s some International business activities necessary, but it’s important to do this. It’s the future, and something that has to be done.
Search engines such as Google are a virtual sales channel that makes your products and brands visible in this country. Google.ca favors Canadian hosted sites so you’ll want to create a presence in Canada on a Web site hosted in Canada. With this you can rank high in the search results that Canadians see.
If your goal is branding or e-commerce sales, creating a Canadian presence and providing a straightforward presence for a keyword phrase is a great idea. From Internet branding to online sales, Google.ca is a powerful sales channel that deserves your investment.
One of those markets is Canada. Canada with its 33 million consumers is about 11% of the size of the US market and with Free Trade, the border is no longer a barrier. Canadians are familiar with US goods and receptive to American products. Canadians also share search engines. The usage of Google is even higher than in the US. A US company that is able to establish a business presence here can achieve substantial sales.
Simple Branding
For northern US companies, such as New England-based companies, Canada is a great market. US firms might are learning to lower the advertising volume in approaching Canadians. With Canadians, it’s simple and straightforward. Present benefits and value without diversion and the trust factor will be high. Canadians search the Web for products and services in perhaps greater numbers than other nations, but they are more literal in their views. When they type something into the Google search engine, they mean what they say. Those keywords are golden. The words they use are already infused with branding meaning they’ve received from advertising. Yes, that commoditizes the keyword phrases they use, but that’s the way it is. If your Web site ranks for those phrases, you’ve got Canadian attention.
The Canadian approach is sometimes viewed with some humor, however Canadian values and culture are not lost on Americans. The attraction is the simplicity. It may seem hokey, but Canadians love hokey (not hockey) because it’s simple and trustworthy. A straight forward Web site with top Google rankings is gold. You can expect a flood of Canadian orders. With 33 Million buyers, how can that not be worth it?
The Canadian economy has been strong and Canadians have purchasing power and American goods have a branding value that Canadians respect. When you access the Canadian market, you have a decided branding advantage.
To market to Canadians, your Web site just needs to be accessible. If you’re not visible in Google, you’re not accessible. Some US companies won’t accept Canadian orders. They get a trickle of initial orders from Canada and face some import duties and then give up. They announce that no Canadian orders are accepted. That’s like turning down New York. Yes, there’s some International business activities necessary, but it’s important to do this. It’s the future, and something that has to be done.
Search engines such as Google are a virtual sales channel that makes your products and brands visible in this country. Google.ca favors Canadian hosted sites so you’ll want to create a presence in Canada on a Web site hosted in Canada. With this you can rank high in the search results that Canadians see.
If your goal is branding or e-commerce sales, creating a Canadian presence and providing a straightforward presence for a keyword phrase is a great idea. From Internet branding to online sales, Google.ca is a powerful sales channel that deserves your investment.
September 4, 2006
A program on Webmaster Radio featuring Google’s Matt Cutts and Vanessa Fox discusses Google’s regionalized results. They mention that they want results to be more relevant to the region that people live in. For SEO Companies, it makes checking rankings unreliable since the rankings are specific to the Google datacenter that was queried. Results from California users will be different than those in Boston. So your search in Massachusetts will turn up a different set of results than those in California, and particularly those in Canada, Mexico and the UK. So rank reporting may have some errors.
Regional search results here, refers to more than just the domains google.co.uk and google.com and google.mx. People across the US use google.com but according to Google will get slightly different results and those companies that score higher for a presence in that region may rank better. Google could be using the IP address of the web site to assign regional relevance however many companies host their sites in other areas of the country. They could also be using Google local search data to place sites. Not much is said about this regionalization, but it does make sense to make results regional, as most searchers want to be able to type in general search queries and get results that are relevant to them, not for someone on the other side of the country.
The regionalization of search results means searches is great news for New England area companies. Where once your local company web site would have no chance of ranking in popular phrases due to the huge, well-funded competitors across the world capturing those top rankings.
This regionalization of results actually presents a threat to national and international corporations who want to dominate all rankings and capture high volumes of traffic from all markets.
August 26, 2006
Can the improvements in your search engine marketing campaign be modest yet still result in huge revenue gains? It sure can. The reason is simple too. The new incoming visitors are generating new sales and in many industries, one sale is a big deal. SEO ROI can make an impact even with successful companies.
When a custom software producer for instance sells one new software suite with related custom installation, training, and ancillary services, the revenue can be anywhere from $25 thousand to $250 thousand dollars. Therefore, gaining 100 new visitors in September seems insignificant, hardly worth mentioning.
One client in the travel industry increased their visits from search engines by a very modest 2,000 per month. They spend millions on marketing every year and the search engine visit improvement was only a fraction of the traffic they get monthly. It was a light optimization, but they've discovered the power of high rankings on popular keywords. This new traffic was eager for their service and the result was an astonishing increase in sales. These were new customers from the US, UK, Canada, and Japan too.
That would suggest their current online and offline marketing was reaching the same people and they’d reached a plateau with those marketing mediums. Achieving high rankings in Google, MSN and Yahoo meant reaching customers with no preference and who were new to their brand. Search engine users are well-qualified prospects too. Their experience bore out how true that is.
The increase in sales for their company made a very noticeable difference during a period where travel purchases were down. (see Google Trends.
Search engine marketing people often focus on visits and traffic because clients send them off on that tangent. By staying focused on the end-revenue generated, the whole search engine marketing campaign is going to be geared toward what really works.
We’ve tracked the performance of many price-sensitive SEO shoppers who chose other SEM providers and found their rankings and overall visibility was very poor. By sticking to “traffic” or “cost” paradigms, they missed doing what was really necessary to improve their sales results. And it doesn’t take much in the way of increasing traffic to build extraordinary sales results either. When you hit the mark with SEO using the right strategy and sufficient resources, you can achieve exceptional SEO ROI.
When a custom software producer for instance sells one new software suite with related custom installation, training, and ancillary services, the revenue can be anywhere from $25 thousand to $250 thousand dollars. Therefore, gaining 100 new visitors in September seems insignificant, hardly worth mentioning.
One client in the travel industry increased their visits from search engines by a very modest 2,000 per month. They spend millions on marketing every year and the search engine visit improvement was only a fraction of the traffic they get monthly. It was a light optimization, but they've discovered the power of high rankings on popular keywords. This new traffic was eager for their service and the result was an astonishing increase in sales. These were new customers from the US, UK, Canada, and Japan too.
That would suggest their current online and offline marketing was reaching the same people and they’d reached a plateau with those marketing mediums. Achieving high rankings in Google, MSN and Yahoo meant reaching customers with no preference and who were new to their brand. Search engine users are well-qualified prospects too. Their experience bore out how true that is.
The increase in sales for their company made a very noticeable difference during a period where travel purchases were down. (see Google Trends.
Search engine marketing people often focus on visits and traffic because clients send them off on that tangent. By staying focused on the end-revenue generated, the whole search engine marketing campaign is going to be geared toward what really works.
We’ve tracked the performance of many price-sensitive SEO shoppers who chose other SEM providers and found their rankings and overall visibility was very poor. By sticking to “traffic” or “cost” paradigms, they missed doing what was really necessary to improve their sales results. And it doesn’t take much in the way of increasing traffic to build extraordinary sales results either. When you hit the mark with SEO using the right strategy and sufficient resources, you can achieve exceptional SEO ROI.
August 8, 2006
It appears the days when you didn’t have to consider optimization for Adwords landing pages is gone.
Because of the misrepresentation of Adwords advertising by some, Google is using a special spider/robot to spider and index the pages that advertisers are linking to from their Adwords ads. After receiving input from Google users, Google has determined that many landing pages aren’t very relevant to the keyword phrase the advertiser bid on. People have clicked on Adwords ads and found content that was not all that useful to them. This usually happens when advertisers just want lots of traffic and don’t care particularly if their site or landing pages are relevant to the keyword phrase the Google user typed.
If you’re a Google advertiser and your site and Adwords landing pages are designed for other purposes than keyword relevance, you may have to pay a higher per click price. If this is a cash grab by Google or an inducement to advertisers to keep their ads relevant isn’t sure.
Google has always assessed landing pages and ads for relevance, yet that manual and automated monitoring of landing pages just wasn’t able to keep up. Some advertisers may have tried to bend the advertising guidelines to improve conversion. Google had to find a better way to ensure ad quality. Misleading ads discourage Google users from clicking on ads in future so it is important for Google to do something. Another issue here is that advertisers advertising a specific type of product have a tougher time keeping their ad relevant to a popular keyword phrase. To compensate, they try to use tricky copy to make it relevant and get the needed clickthroughs. For instance, if your ad sells “Neil Diamond Greatest Hits CDs” and you’re bidding on a phrase such as music cds, clickthrough performance won’t be good because most people are looking for other types of music. Your ad will have to appeal to a general audience rather than just Neil Diamond fans. Your landing page too will have to optimized for the phrase “music cds” to make it relevant to that search. Your landing page’s copy can’t all be about Neil Diamonds greatest hits cds.
Whether your Adwords ads landing pages are relevant to the search or not, all landing pages will need some keyword optimization in order to reduce your ppc prices. Your PPC cost will increase due to the fact that you’ll have to bid higher to get your ad to appear higher in the ad list. If relevance of your landing pages is considered low, then Google will likely apply a penalty of sorts which send your ad down the list.
At some point Google will assess links pointing to the adwords landing pages and perhaps site themes as another measure of determining keyword relevance. So the whole realm of Google adwords advertising may not be so simple and easy after all.
There is little on a Web site or on the Web for that matter that isn't impacted by optimization. It is inevitable that when visibility on the web is dependent on a document index (Google), that your site's pages will have to be written and structured so they meet the rules of that index.
May 16, 2006
Some of the biggest successes in online business have come from the manager’s confidence that they were in the right place at the right time. When it comes to search engine marketing, it is a powerful and growing promotion medium and for most businesses, it is the right place at the right time. If your market is national or international, there is no better place to be than high rankings and wide visibility on Google or Yahoo.
Good practice may dictate marketing studies and seek measurable results, however the demand for this unrealistic given that few other areas of marketing or advertising are put through this level of scrutiny. The growth in search engine usage by consumers and B2B buyers continues unabated (http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=40573) and people are influenced to purchase (http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=526). The amount of investment in search engine marketing (particularly paid search marketing) is growing at a phenomenal rate and is expected to reach 26 billion by 2010. Not investing in this area confidently could be a threat to the future of your business. It really is time to investigate the facts and look deeply at the real demand for your product online and how you can leverage the reach of search engines. It’s all about positioning, if you’re late coming to the market, that’s not a good starting position.
Search engine marketing however does have an advantage in this area in that it is very measurable. At least, online sales are measurable. Statistics show that most sales occur offline, so many companies are receiving huge benefits in offline sales, prestige, and brand exposure from their search engine marketing campaigns. Very often, the search engine marketing campaign is not given credit for this added value.
If you’re considering investing in SEM or organic search engine optimization, consider that most businesses do very well. It is common to see many potential clients lose confidence the point they need to make a commitment. It does take a leap of faith and it comes back to a confidence, not only in the SEO provider, but also confidence that your business is right for the Internet.
If online promotion is valid and can create a customer and strengthen loyalty, then you have the basis of your faith. In very competitive keyword areas, a strong effort is needed. If competitors are investing strongly in organic search engine rankings, then you’ll have to match them in that effort. Again, it comes back to your belief in online marketing and whether your business will benefit.
If you don’t have confidence that your company has what it takes to be successful, then re-examine your value proposition for your customers. If the value proposition isn’t there online, then it probably isn’t going to work for the rest of your marketing either. Any incentives for customer offline can be applied online. If you lack confidence, it usually stems back to your value proposition. If there is no compelling reason for customers to buy your product or service, then perhaps search engine generated visits to your site may not be productive.
If your value proposition is strong, then by reaching targeted, interested buyers, you’re getting access that could propel your business to new heights in sales and market awareness.
March 31, 2006
SEO or Business Development. Which is more Important?
Managers of online businesses face tough decisions about how to set a budget for online marketing, and in particular, organic search engine optimization. It’s becoming increasingly important to build a business case for organic search. That’s because paid advertising is highly sought and budgets are being eaten up quickly. Very often, when online advertising budgets are depleted more money is discovered and advertising resumes on a limited basis usually. Unfortunately, when SEO budgets are exhausted, the SEO campaign seems to end right there.
A big reason for this is that SEO is not given the respect it deserves and another reason is that the success of organic optimization is more difficult to measure. As better and cheaper analytical tools become available, more Web site owners will be able to see the real value of the keywords they rank for. For every one online sale that occurs, two offline sales are generated. Recent reports from the Center for Media Research revealed that 63 percent of searchers completed a purchase in offline retail stores following their search activity, while 25 percent of searchers purchased an item directly related to their query, with more than 1/3 of them buying online.
These statistics are becoming more widely known and the attitude toward SEO is slowly improving. However, the needs of other business activities may steal that money which should rightly go to organic search engine optimization and content development.
A couple of SEO clients come to mind with this phenomenon. One was a telecommunications e-commerce operation in Houston. After being penalized by Google, I was brought into correct the situation which I did. Things were looking up for the company and visibility was improving as the penalties wore off. This would have been the best time to continue to develop their search engine rankings and visibility; however they decided to spend their budget on Web design, introducing new products, and other non-search marketing advertising deals. They built a nice looking Web site and it was an improvement. The advertising funds were spent and traffic was not coming in as expected. So here they had a great site with no visitors. They couldn’t find the funding to improve their very important organic rankings. Initially, they received a price break on the optimization. Instead of encouraging a positive ongoing relationship, it actually encouraged them to take advantage of the situation and spend their money on other marketing activities.
A second case saw a real estate related company spend its funds on product development. Some of this was necessary, but there was a time when the client had to make a decision about how much of his budget to allocate to developing product to sell. The product wasn’t actually the thrust of where his business was going. So, now he is overstocked with product and wasn’t able to fund the very necessary search engine optimization and content development needed on his web site.
Search engine rankings and organic referrals from search engines are free, so marketers and clients naturally assume that the work necessary to get those rankings should also be free. It’s guilt by association and it’s natural for the human mind to fall into that trap. It’s very important in the initial stages of an executive’s decision making process to ensure they realize that organic search engine rankings are competitive. The collateral for high rankings do have a price.
When you consider what to allocate to organic optimization, think about how much it costs to buy those clicks and how much it costs to have a Web designer and copywriter create, write or amend the content that is generated in SEO activities.
The point in this is that we should not put the cart before the horse. Sometimes in decision making, we get caught up in the hype or rumor mill, and we end up making poor choices. If you’ve got a warehouse full of merchandise, or a high paid team of service providers, you need to take care of the key matter of always having access to the market. In online terms, Google rankings are increasingly the marketplace. SEO is a bargain and provides excellent ROI. Give the respect it deserves and you won’t have to worry about spamming penalties or low rankings.