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FEATURED ARTICLES

How Becoming Too Efficient for Google AdWords Can Impact Your Profits

Janet Driscoll Miller , Search Mojo

As Google AdWords advertisers become more proficient with the AdWords system, they may find themselves losing out on valuable impressions that may drive more conversions, essentially lowering their impression share or “share of voice.” It appears that Google Ad Rank may in fact affect significantly impact impression share – thus causing advertisers to question if increasing average cost-per-click (CPC) to gain more visibility fits in their profit margins. How Ad Rank Affects Impressions Ad rank is the measurement that Google uses to determine ad position for each keyword. As defined by Google: A keyword-targeted ad's position is based on its ad rank, which is determined by your keyword or ad group’s cost-per-click (CPC) bid times the matched keyword's Quality Score. To be promoted to a top position above Google search results, your ad must exceed a certain quality threshold, which helps ensure that only the highest quality ads appear in top spots.

Optimize Your Results by Marketing Directly

R. Lakshmi-Ratan, DMA

In today’s multichannel universe, the strongest online marketing strategy is one that carefully incorporates offline media as well – using the strengths of each within an overall intelligent, integrated approach.

Online direct marketing is growing rapidly, as demonstrated by any number of recent trends and developments.  In fact, last year our ongoing DMA econometric study for the very first time showed slightly more sales being made on the Web ($397.4 billion) versus sales made over the phone ($396.8 billion.) 

This is an irrevocable shift, as evidenced by the growth rates associated with both channels.  Sales driven by non-email Internet marketing campaigns, and the expenditures that advertisers make in these campaigns, are both growing in the upper double-digits range year over year, while comparable growth rates for telephone selling hover around two percent.

Post-click Optimization: Squeeze the Most Out of Every Click

Alex Porter, Location3 Media

You’ve scrubbed your keyword list, set geo-targeting parameters, utilized time and day parting, eliminated fraudulent clicks, managed your brand terms and written compelling ad copy. Is there a way to squeeze a few more drops from your search campaign?

Think beyond just bringing traffic to your site and start considering what happens after searchers click. Are you showing visitors what they want to see? Are you interacting with them properly? Are you giving them too many or two few options? Are you even sending them to the right page? So may questions. How can you know? With post-click optimization.

Post-click optimization is the process of analyzing, testing and enhancing landing pages. It should be tackled in phases—Phase 1: Web analytics; Phase 2: Behavioral analysis; Phase 3: Web design; Phase 4: multivariate testing. The process requires a great deal of cooperation between marketing, design and IT departments. And it can be time and labor intensive as well. Yet, post-click optimization has been known to lift conversion rates by as much as 137 percent, an easily justifiable statistic.

Organizations Struggle to Manage the Intersection between IT and Web 2.0 Marketing

Brad Beiermann , Cimstrat Inc.

The technology driving Web 2.0 has outpaced many marketing professionals ability to stay ahead of the curve. This has left many organizations playing to the script of an outdated  marketing strategy. The possibility of  failure is now higher than ever...or is it?

As the U.S. continues shifts from an industrial economy to a services oriented economy, the need for businesses to leverage online Web services continues to grow. As a result, the opportunity for innovation exists in creating an experience that allows greater interactivity between a corporate website and the customer. Unfortunately, many companies are still behind the eight ball with static Web 1.0 websites. Customers have millions of channels to surf today on the Web. A site that has no interaction will have a difficult time competing. Corporate websites that allow potential customers to express themselves and experience an emotional bond will be online leaders. Sites such as mySpace, Twitter, and YouTube have allowed Web users to easily express a topic near and dear to their hearts: Themselves. CMO's not working closely with their technology groups to create an enhanced online interactive customer experience, may find soon find themselves without a job. Their biggest challenge is getting the right mix of people to innovate and combine Web 2.0 technologies with a sticky marketing strategy. On the other side of the coin, there are very few resources in corporate IT departments who have the background in creating  business models to enable online value driven customer interaction. This leads us to one of the most pressing hurdles in today's U.S. labor market...an impending brain drain in  he leadership ranks.