We’ve been in the Internet marketing business almost 12 years now. Looking back I can tell you that our clients who have been the most successful at search marketing are those who have been able quickly implement recommendations to improve search results and conversion rates, setup landing page tests, test various offers and messages etc, and who understand that it can take many months or years to become successful at search marketing and Internet marketing in general.

Unfortunately, we’ve had a few clients who could not get recommendations or tests implemented in a timely manner leading to failure or more often delaying their eventual success for years!

Our clients who continually implemented recommendations and tests eventually succeeded.

Your Web Site Is Almost Certainly Ineffective At Converting People Who Searched On Non-Brand Keyword Phrases!

It’s virtually guaranteed that a web site that has not been improved systematically will not do an effective job of converting site visitors with little or no prior knowledge about the company or its products and services.  This includes most of the non brand keyword phrases being searched on to reach the web site (from both organic and PPC search results) as well as visitors from many other referral sites.

In a previous article I took an educated guess and said that I thought about half our new clients who had not worked at improving the conversion rates on their web sites had significant issues with this. Wrong! I’ve gone back through a few years of client data. It’s 100%!

Yes, your web site likely does a decent job of converting those who searched on your own brand phrases, indicating that they already knew about you, but for most web sites there’s just not enough people searching on their brand phrases to be successful. More importantly, don’t you want to be successful generating business from the non brand keyword phrases too? Of course you do or why would you even be focusing on search marketing at all? Certainly you’re not focusing on search marketing just to do well for you own brand phrases?

I’ve said it so many times I’m sure I sound like a broken record, but it’s not just about getting the traffic to your site. What happens after people reach your site is as important, maybe more important. You’ll need to improve conversion rates on the site, very often implement recommendations to improve conversions, implementing landing pages to test, testing offers, messaging, possibly pricing etc

You Simply Can Not Succeed At Search Marketing Without Improving Conversions on Your Web Site

So if 100% of web sites that have not been worked on to improve conversions do an ineffective job of converting site visitors who searched on non brand phrases then you are doomed to failure unless you improve conversions on the site. You must improve conversions on your web site.

Focusing only on increasing traffic to your web site for non brand phrases, via organic search (SEO) and/or PPC, will likely increase the traffic to the site, but very few of these searchers will be persuaded to become customers.

In other words your search traffic will increase, but your business will not grow very much. You’ll spend time and money to increase traffic for very little return.

How to estimate conversion rates for brand vs. non-brand keyword phrases using Google Analytics

You can get a quick look at the conversion rates for your top keywords using Google Analytics if goal tracking is step up to measure important goals such as leads or purchases or at least to measure strong indicators of imminent conversions.

From the main Google Analytics window click Traffic Sources / Keywords. Then click on a Goal Set tab (see the screen shot)

Scroll through the keywords and compare the conversion rate(s) for your brand phrases vs. important non brand phrases (phrases that are relevant and on target).

To see more than the default number of keywords (usually the top 10 phrases by visits) scroll to the bottom of the chart and select more rows in the Show Rows: drop down selector.

A More Precise Method

To be a more precise scroll to the bottom of the listing of keywords to the Filter Keyword field, choose “Containing” or “excluding” in the drop down, then type in some unique part of your brand or non brand phrases and click Go. You can enter multiple keywords by separating them with a “ | “ (it’s the upper case of the \ character located just above the Enter key).

So for example if you want to enter some Google brand phrases you might enter:

google|adwords|android

You can export the selections or keywords and calculate totals for conversion rates etc for your brand vs. non brand phrases (you can break them out by various groups of brand and non brand phrases etc)

You should expect a higher conversion rate for your brand phrases. People who search on your brand phrases knew something about you before they came to the site (possibly from referrals, print or other traditional media, or perhaps they were past clients, resellers etc) however in our experience the ratio for the conversion rates of your brand phrases vs. the non brand phrases should be not much higher than about 5 or 6 (i.e. the brand phrases should convert no more than about 5 to 6 times better than the non-brand phrases.). Much higher than this is a signal that your site may not be doing a very good job of converting people who searched on non brand phrases.

 
Do the Math – Slow Implementation Can Be a Huge Opportunity Loss, Even Leading To Failure

Unfortunately, we’ve had a few clients who could not get recommendations or tests implemented in a timely manner. Sometimes this was due to limitations with template sites that are often used within Content Management Systems and/or ecommerce sites. However, more often it was due to backlogs in IT or with a client’s independent web developer.

Some of these clients were forced to put their search marketing efforts essentially on hold for years until till they could get to a point where they can get web development tasks done quicker.

In one case, after years of frustration a client of ours has essentially fired their IT department, taking responsibility for the web site away from IT all together. They are having the web site rebuilt by an outside firm that will handle all site updates under the direction of the Marketing Department (which is where responsibility for a web site probably should lie if the site’s main goal is to increase business).

Assume that through quick implementation of conversion improvement recommendations and tests that a web site’s conversion rate doubled within a year (this is actually at the low end for most of our clients). Now assume that this improvement in the conversion rate leads to an additional $250,000 net income (income, not revenue) each of the following two years. That’s an additional $500,000 in net income over 3 years. 

Do the math using your own metrics and estimate the potential net income opportunity you’ll miss if it takes you 2-3 years just to start making progress at improving conversion rates (as has been the case with some of our clients).

Continually Work To Improve Conversion Rates for Non Brand Phrases and You’ll Eventually Succeed

I truly believe, from experience, that implementation and perseverance are the most important factors to internet marketing success and more specifically search marketing success or failure (or more often delayed success).

Clients who continually implemented recommendations and tests eventually succeeded. Those who couldn’t failed or more often delayed their success till they could implement recommendations quickly.

If you’re having issues implementing conversion improvement recommendations and tests determine why and correct it quickly or you could delay your eventual success for many years.

 
For More Info

Get Rich Quick with PPC! Sorry, PPC Success Takes Time Too. A case study of a client where our Adwords campaign initially was not converting well enough to pay off. It took a year, but we now have a successful campaign, one where the client has taken ad budget from other ad venues to fund the PPC campaign because it generates leads.

Improve the conversion rate for non-brand keyword phrases for search marking success. A Case study where a client’s PPC campaign was losing money for years because the site is not converting people who search on non brand phrases very well.

4 Initial Keys to Internet Marketing Success. This article covers 4 important keys to success, two of which are the topics of this article, implementing recommendations and tests and perseverance.

eVision’s Social Media Service

Today, Social Media (such as Facebook, twitter, blogs etc) should be an integral part of a businesses’ marketing plan.

However the implementation of Social Media can be very time consuming, so eVision has a service to help our client’s with this…

Learn about eVision’s Social Media Service

The post The most crucial ingredients for search marketing success? Fast implementation and Perseverance! appeared first on eVision Online Marketing.

You can download load it. I think it’s pretty simple to use and can be used to estimate ROI from many types of campaigns.

Download the ROI Calculator

Here’s an explanation of the columns etc –

Visits In period: To the estimate potential ROI from conversions from all sources of traffic insert the number of visitors (ideally unique visitors if available) from your web site stats/reports or from site analytics .

Or if you have the approximate number of conversions from a particular source of traffic, AdWords or an email campaign for example, then you could insert the number of visits (or “click-throughs” or “message opens” etc) from that source.

Number of Days in period: The number of days in the period is used later to estimate the increase in value from conversions for a year (which of course doesn’t apply to all sources of traffic such as email campaigns).

Approx Conversions: The approximate number of conversions, whether it’s a single conversion goal, such as onsite purchases or lead inquires, or a total of two or more conversion goals.

This number could come from Analytics or PPC conversion tracking for example, or it could come from an actual count of conversions from the web site. Or it could be just a rough guess.

Conversion rate: The conversion rate will be calculated for you. It’s,  Approx Conversions / Unique Visits In period.

Approx value each conversion: This should be an estimate of the value for a conversion to you. It could be the immediate revenue or gross profit for an online sale, or the estimate of first year or life-time value of a new customer etc. For lead generation you’ll need to figure your approximate leads to sales number to get the estimated value (See the posts mentioned below for more on this)

Approx value of conversions: This will be calculated for you. It’s, Approx Conversions X Approx value of each conversion, i.e. the total value of the conversions during the period.

What if improve conversion rate to: Enter a “what if” value here to see the effect of improving the conversion rate to this amount.

The Results Columns –

Then Approx conversions: This column will be calculated. It’s the approximate number of conversions that would have resulted if the conversion rate had been improved to the “what if” conversion rate.

Then Approx value of conversions: This column will be calculated. It’s the approximate value of all the conversions that would have resulted if the conversion rate had been improved to the “what if” conversion rate.

Approx Increase in conversion value for Period: This will be calculated. It’s the approximate additional value you would have seen from the additional conversions in the period.

Approx Increase in conversion value for 1 year: This will be calculated. It’s the estimated additional value you would have seen from the additional conversions over a year (which of course doesn’t apply to all sources of traffic such as email campaigns or may not be valid because of seasonality etc).

Multiple Conversion Goals – You can estimate more than one type of conversion goal. The calculator is set up to accommodate two conversion goals. For addition goals select and copy an entire row then paste into a blank row.

Download the ROI Calculator

 For More Information

• Measuring ROI from an online marketing campaign (SEO, PPC, or any online campaign)
• Cost justifying using a Search Engine Marketing Agency to run a PPC campaign. This post was specific to PPC campaign but there’s a technique that can be adapted to most situations.
• Increased conversion rate 300% by redesigning web site using Conversion Point Architecture. Scroll down to the section named ”Estimate the potential ROI from improved conversion rates on your site”

The post ROI Calculator Download: Calculate the Potential Return on Investment from Improvements in Web Site Conversion Rates appeared first on eVision Online Marketing.

We then have to try to convince them that the metrics they were using to manage the PPC campaign are not the most important metrics, rather it’s about bringing targeted traffic to the site that is engaged enough to convert in some manner, whether this is filling out an inquiry from, purchasing something, picking up the phone and calling, downloading an important white paper, visiting a brick & mortar facility, or at the very least spending a reasonable amount of time on the site.

Some client’s who may have been running their own campaigns for some time have a very hard time understating and accepting that when you manage a PPC campaign with the goal of improving the more important metrics of Conversions, Cost per Conversion, even Time on Site, you very often lower one or more of the other metrics.

In this post I’ll how you some actual examples from client campaigns where we’ve lower one of these metrics but improved some other more important metrics leading to more conversions or a lower cost per conversion or both.

Impressions & Clicks Have Declined!!!
This client was running their Google AdWords campaign themselves until we took it over about 4 months ago.

The report shows the past year’s results as reported by Google Analytics:

Notice that the number of Impressions (the number of times the client’s ads were shown in the search results) has gone down since we started managing the campaign and the number of Clicks (the number of people who clicked on an ad) is lower in June 08 then when the client was running the campaign

Here’s the typical panic call – “Our impressions are way down!” or “The number of Clicks is down!”

Yes they are. But let’s look at the more important numbers:

The number of impressions is indeed down dramatically and the number of Clicks each month was lower in June then ever before. However, notice that the number of conversions is up more than 300% (in this case it’s the number of visitors who paid to become members – “Approx # of Sign Ups”). The related Conversion Rate is also up more than 300% (The conversion rate is the percentage of the people who clicked through to the site and converted, i.e. signed up to become a member).

Look at the decreased cost per conversion (Avg Cost per Signup). It’s gone from $266 and $366 per signup in December and January down to $139 and $98 per signup in May and June.

How can this be? How can we lower the number of times the ads were displayed (The Impressions) as well as the number of people who clicked through to the web site and improve conversions at the same time?

We systemically paused keywords and in some cases even entire AdGroups that were not converting into signups at an acceptable rate. When you lower the number of keywords that are running obviously you’re going to lower the number of ad Impressions (the number of times ads are displayed).

More importantly, this client was attracting many of the wrong people to click through to their web site. A high percentage of these people who were not converting. They were spending a large portion of their monthly budget on clicks that were not converting. Their ad budget was being eating up by these clicks. Turning off keywords and ads that were not converting (and testing new ads and keywords) allows the keywords and ads that are converting to run more often within their budget resulting in higher numbers of conversions for a lower average Cost per Conversion.

Impressions and Google’s Quality Score
Some would say “who cares if the impressions are high? I don’t pay unless someone clicks through to the site anyway.

Well, actually you do pay in these days of Quality Score.

If you have large numbers of Impressions with relatively few clicks this means that you have a relatively low Click-Through Rate (CTR: The percentage of people who see an ad and click on it).

For example, in December 07 the above client’s ads were seen 574,901 times. 2,995 people clicked on an ad. That’s 574,901 impressions / 2,995 clicks = a 0.52% Click-Through Rate. However in June 07 there were 160,703 ad Impressions. 2,380 people clicked on one of those ads. That’s 160,703 Impressions / 2,380 clicks = a much higher 1.48% Click-Through Rate. The CTR was almost 3 times higher in June 08 than it was in December 07.

With Google the Click-Through Rate is one major factor that is used to determine the AdWords Quality Score. The lower the quality score the more you have to pay per click for your keywords to be active – called the Minimum Bid. For example, a keyword with a very low Quality Score might require a minimum bid over $1.00 to be active where a keyword with a high Quality Score might only require a minimum bid over $0.25 to be active.

A poorly performing keyword can affect an entire AdWords account, because another factor used to calculate Quality Score is the account’s history. An account’s history is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in the account. If you have many poorly performing keywords in an account this could adversely impact your Quality Score.

Furthermore, Quality Score is used when determining ad rank (the position in the search results) as well as minimum bid prices. Low ad rank and high minimum bid prices can affect your ad’s visibility and performance (Note that some of the above description was provided by Google).

Lower Click-Through Rates!!
There are even times when we actually lower the Click-Through Rate as well as, in some cases, the total number of clicks to improve the overall results of a campaign.

Take a look at these actual client AdWords numbers:

Notice the click-through rate in the more recent month of March 08 (CTR = 0.28%) is less than half of click-through rate for the earlier month of November 07 (CTR = 0.70%). The total number of clicks is also down from 39,933 to 36,766 (Note this is a combined search and content network campaign so the CTR’s are much lower than a search only campaign).

Here’s the typical panic call when a client sees numbers like this – “Our Click-Through Rate is dropping!””

Yes they are. But again let’s look at the more important numbers:

Notice that even though the Click-Through Rate and the number of Clicks have gone down the number of conversions has gone up from 235 to 346 and the cost per conversion has been reduced from $48.70 to $40.63. They are spending less for more!

This is very counter intuitive to most people, “How can you possibly lower our CTR and be improving our campaign?!!”

Well here are a few real world examples where lowering the CTR and possibly the number of Clicks actually improves the campaign result, for example:

Changing Ad Copy to Better Focus on the Target Market
Assume you run a PPC campaign to sell high capacity, after-market fuel tanks for pickup trucks (bought by, for example, people who pull campers etc).

You might have an ad like the following:

High Capacity Fuel Tank
For Pickup Trucks
[third line of copy]

This ad might be delivering decent results such as the following:

But what if you only sell fuel tanks for American made pickup trucks? The way the above ad is written it is likely enticing people who own foreign pickup trucks to click through to the site too (clicks that you are paying for). Once these visitors arrive at the site they soon realize you don’t have a fuel tank for their truck. They leave the site and continue their search.

To improve the campaign you might test an ad such as the following:

High Capacity Fuel Tank
For American Pickup Trucks
[third line of copy]

This ad would likely have the affect of reducing the number of the people who own foreign pickups from clicking on the ad while those who own American pickup trucks should continue to click through (in fact, even more owners of American pickup trucks may click through because the ad makes it clearer to them that your company likely has what they are looking for).

That simple change of focus in the ad (we just added one word) might result in the following results (Note that the following numbers for Ad 2 are not actual client metrics they were adjusted to show you how changes to an ad can affect the metrics):

By changing the ad to entice only the target market, the CTR and the number of clicks has gone down (because most of the owners of foreign pickup trucks are no longer clicking on the ad) but the Conversion Rate and the number of conversions has actually increased and the cost per conversion has been reduced. Again, more Conversions for less cost per conversion.

Lower Ad Positions to Reduce the Cost per Conversion
Very often we reduce the maximum amount of the bids on keywords in order to lower the cost per conversion to some target cost per conversion or ROI amount. When we lower the maximum amount of bids on keywords it has the affect of lowering the ad positions in the search results for those keywords. Lower ad positions will typically result in a reduction in the number of people clicking on an ad. However, as long as the ad stays on the same page of the search results the Impressions will remain the same. With the same number of Impressions and less Click-Throughs the Click-Through Rate will go down (CTR = Impressions / Clicks).

For More Information

• Measuring ROI from an online marketing campaign (SEO, PPC, or any online campaign) – A Blog Post
• Offline Conversion Tracking: 8 methods to measure offline sales and conversions from online marketing campaigns – A Blog Post
• eVision’s Search Engine Advertising Overview

The post Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising: It’s about Traffic that Engages and Converts: Not Impressions, Clicks, or even Click-Through Rates (CTR) appeared first on eVision Online Marketing.