According to Forrester Research's U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast, search advertising will grow 15 percent per year over the next four years and is one of the leading interactive marketing approaches.
Search Marketing Metrics to Track
In order to establish the effectiveness of a search marketing campaign, small businesses need to track key metrics such as impressions, clicks, conversions, and return on advertising spend.
In an article on American Express' OPEN Forum, Glen Stansberry suggests that conversions are the most important metric to track.
"Conversions are the number of sales divided by the number of visitors that come to (the company's) site," explains Stansberry.
Business owners need to know their company website's conversion rates so that they can have a baseline to work with as they set goals for improvement.
Another metric to keep track of is what sites are sending traffic to the company website. This could result in the discovery of an unexpected source that is driving site traffic. Additionally, knowing the primary source of traffic - whether it's Twitter, advertising or another website - can focus the company's content strategies.
It is also important to know which search keywords are bringing visitors to the site. Stansberry asserts that search engine visitors are often the most motivated, and thus more likely to make a purchase than other visitors. Business owners can use this information to improve their keyword rankings, which will improve their SEO marketing.
Maria Colacurcio, vice president of marketing at Smartsheet.com, a software startup, told Inc. Technology that the company decided to implement multi-variate testing, which tests multiple elements of a webpage in order to establish the optimal combination. The startup used this type of search marketing test to discover whether customer quotes or analyst quotes led to more clicks. Smartsheet.com was able to test more than 1,000 different combinations in order to create the optimal banner ad.
Colacurcio told Inc. that her company was able to benefit from multi-variate testing as the conversion rate of the banner ads grew from 4-5 percent to 6-12 percent, without any additional financial investment in Google Adwords. The company vice president noted that the company wants to make the most of every dollar invested in search marketing.
Tracking Applications
Search engine marketing programs offer multiple options for tracking these key metrics. Consider Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and American Express OPEN SearchManager, all of which offer a "dashboard" feature with various metrics.
For instance, the OPEN dashboard feature includes an overview of performance metrics, such as cost and revenue data, over different periods of time. The technology tracks impressions, clicks, click-through rates, costs, conversions and more. Small businesses with several search marketing accounts also benefit because they can access all of them through one portal using SearchManager, making it easier to manage their accounts. Business owners can update keywords and ad groups, and manage campaigns from one location. The purpose of SearchManager is to help streamline the process, making it a simpler task to tackle.
While business owners have lots of choices when it comes to search engine marketing programs, the important thing is to do a little comparison shopping. That means reviewing the options offered by programs such as Google AdWords and American Express OPEN before choosing the one that fits best with their business needs.
No comments:
Post a Comment