Internal Site Search Usage: Gateway into the Visitor’s Mind

The main goal of virtually every single marketing strategy is to understand what the target market wants. Whether your particular strategy involves generating more leads or increasing sales, it is common marketing knowledge that you must know what your customer is looking for. In the wide world of web design, internet marketing, and web analytics, there are many avenues of data and insights that can lead to more targeted marketing.

In particular, internal site search is a very important aspect of your website that should be tracked and analyzed carefully. If your website supports this functionality, visitors can use it to find specific products, services, or other pages on your site quickly and easily. Just as monitoring the top-performing keywords and phrases visitors used to find your website organically on search engines is very important, paying close attention to how your visitors search your internal site is also crucial. It can raise the following questions:

What are visitors searching for the most?

Are they able to find what they’re looking for? If not, is it a product or service you can carry or offer in the future?

Are visitors searching for pages more than using the actual navigation menu?

Paying attention to the internal site search report for your website can yield some interesting results you may not have anticipated before. It may indicate that people are looking for products or services you don’t currently offer. It could also point out detrimental holes into the structure, navigation, and optimization of your website that could negatively affect conversion rates. Monitoring this aspect of your website can help streamline your overall web presence and internet marketing approach, as well as provide a look into the minds of your visitors.

Google AdWords' New Targeting Options

Google AdWords recently eliminated the polygon (custom shape) targeting system, and replaced it with a simpler pin point with radius method. Although this method is easier to set-up and visualize, it may not be as precise. However, select exact city location with a radius can still be very effect and efficient. Your options are either to individual select the cities, or points, that you want to target and set appropriate radius, or to select a central point and set the radius high enough to include all the desires points. Whichever option better fits your PPC management targeting strategy, be sure to implement it by the end of 2011, at which time Google will automatically change your polygon targeting into a set point with a radius. An Example of an alternative targeting strategy is pictured below - if more careful one care make it an even closer match.

Old Polygon Targeting New Alternative Targeting

Has Your Company Forgotten the Web Analytics Data Capturing Basics?

We did some web analytics consulting for a Fortune 500 company recently. This case was very unique! The company had numerous global websites and campaigns, but lacked a standard web analytics solution, standard profile configuration, dedicated data collection team, data validation process, and avenues of communication between IT and the rest of the business. “Web Analytics capabilities”…are you really serious?

We would highly recommend that you solidify these areas before working on web analytics capabilities. Don’t even talk about data collection methodologies until you have the resources (human) in place to develop universal and standard processes. With good talent and proper documentation, you should be able to identify the gap and resolve any issues.

Google's New Cost Per Lead Format

Google is currently testing search and display versions of a cost-per-lead ad format. If launched, this new format could be beneficial for business-to-business advertisers. The new format would allow users to request to have an advertiser contact them either through a phone call or an email. Looks like Google and Google AdWords have identified another opportunity to generate revenue. At the same time, provide advertisers with a new method to engage with customers via the internet. Stay tuned for more information.

Web Analytics: Usage Analysis Leads to Improved Customer Relations

Knowing how your target audience uses your website is integral to increasing visitor conversions and improving customer relations. Various retail stores around the world spend millions of dollars on researching how their customers browse their brick and mortar stores. They use this data to arrange the store in the most efficient manner, even engaging in testing to increase purchases by the customer.

Your internet marketing campaign should adopt a similar approach. Focusing on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) within your web analytics solution can provide insights into how your target audience is using the website. The KPIs can bring troublesome drop-off points within your goal conversion funnels to your attention so you can make the required changes to the design of the page or its content to increase conversions. Perhaps certain landing pages have a consistently high bounce rate. Or perhaps the pageviews-per-visit or average time on site are down. This could indicate that the content on the page is not relevant or targeted enough for the consumer.

Customer relations are not only managed in brick and mortar stores, over the phone, or in emails. Implementing web analytics into your internet marketing approach can provide an integral avenue of improvement to customer relations and conversion rate.

PPC Advertising > Keywords + Ad Copy; Don’t Forget about the Landing Pages

Testing is a crucial part of improving your PPC advertising efforts. You test Keywords to enhance targeting and increase relevant traffic to your site. You test Negative Keywords to prevent irrelevant clicks and lower cost. Testing Ad Copy is to find out what appeals best to your clientele. However, testing should not stop there. Your Landing Page is a critical component of obtaining conversions, and not just clicks.

If you have tested and found great Keywords and have excellent Ad Copy, then there is no doubt that, you are getting clicks and driving relevant traffic to your site. However, what is happening after that still has a huge impact on the success of your PPC efforts. Your Landing Page is the first experience a potential customer has with your website. It needs to aesthetically pleasing, easy to navigate, and a good starting point for your conversion funnel.

In order to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of your Landing Pages, you will need to integrate your Analytical Solution with you PPC Platform. Once you have the Analytics in place, you can begin testing your Landing Pages with tools, like Web Optimizer. Test various wording, layouts, pictures and more to discover what works best for you and your clientele, and watch your ROI increase.

6 Tips to Consider Before Implementing Your Email Marketing Strategy

Most businesses utilize email marketing as a marketing tactic to cross sell new business or for retention purposes. It is pretty rare for an organization to develop a comprehensive email marketing strategy to increase subscription, cross sell, etc that goes beyond email marketing and the basic email metrics. Some email marketing solutions even provide industry averages for those metrics.

The email marketing strategy should go well beyond simple open rates, click through rates, and industry averages. The content of the emails and promotional materials should have a consistent look and feel as well as being customer centric. By customizing the message to the different types of customers or service offerings, it should improve the overall effectiveness of email marketing campaign.

6 Tips to Consider Before Implementing Your Email Marketing Strategy:

1. Segment Your Opt-in List by customer type or services offering

2. Test Your Message & Layout by segments

3. Integrate Email Solutions with Analytical Solutions

4. Implement Social Media functionality

5. Implement Triggers for Follow-ups and Tailored Materials

6. Create Effective Landing Pages to Reinforce the Marketing Message