Digital Roles Overlap

I think it is becoming harder and harder to understand all the roles a modern and competent digital organisation needs. In my opinion this is because each specific skill-set now overlaps others.

This makes is difficult to classify some roles and the people that could fill them. 

Hopefully this diagram goes some way to explain things.

How to get 6800% ROI from a single eCommerce marketing campaign

Back in 2014, my consultancy (Ideal Interface) had an eCommerce client who was having a couple
of major issues:

1. The Return On Investment (ROI) from their Affiliate Marketing efforts using voucher codes was highly variable, having a significant effect on sales margins
2. Conversions rates were falling at key points in the checkout process, as customers were entering invalid voucher codes collected from across the web

The challenge was to take ownership back of the voucher code arena and develop a
marketing programme which would meet the following objectives:

• Test and develop a Voucher Code campaign that users would go to directly and increase the ROI from Voucher Code usage
• Reduce the impact on shopping checkout abandon rates where customers entered a Voucher Code
• Encourage these voucher code users to join the e-mail marketing programme, to subsequently entice voucher code users to become regular customers
• Devise and test a specific e-mail marketing programme for this list of customers that would increase the likelihood of purchasing again

So what happened?

• It was established that users searching on Google for voucher codes were the best group of potential customers to target.
• The first step was to test and develop a Google AdWords campaign based around keyword searches by potential customer using a range of brand name and voucher code related terms such as “<brand> code” and “<brand>; discount code”.
• Then several adverts and discount offers were tested and optimised within the Google advert copy. This was done to see which would provide the best rate of return and to evaluate the propensity to sign up to an email marketing programme.
• The impact on the shopping checkout rate was also monitored.
• An e-mail marketing programme was subsequently devised for this specific list of customers and tests conducted to see which headings, offers and promotions encouraged them to buy again.

The results?

• The Google AdWords Voucher Code campaign produced a staggering return on investment of over 6800%.
• The drop-out rate at the shopping checkout stage for those attempting to use voucher codes halved.
• Over 30% of customers recruited from the Google AdWords Voucher Code campaign went on to join the e-mail marketing programme.
• Over 55% of customers joining the e-mail marketing programme purchased again within 2 months.

Why do I see 'Not Provided' in my SEO agency report?

Since October 2011 Google has increasingly been hiding the actual terms used in organic searches. This has been done by Google as they “believe that protecting these personalized search results is important”.

http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/making-search-more-secure-accessing.html

However, Google has only hidden these terms for organic searches and is seemingly prepared to overlook this privacy issue for its paid-for marketing service AdWords (or as search engine specialist Danny Sullivan put it more bluntly, Google Has Put A Price on Privacy )

These hidden search terms are now reported in Google Analytics under a generic “Not Provided” category and the comparative size of this catch-all segment has been steadily increasing over time. In fact, aggregated industry figures now put this figure as high as around 80% for some sites, with a major increase seen in the 3rd quarter of 2013.
http://www.notprovidedcount.com/

Whilst there are some work-arounds to try to get some insight from this missing data, site owners have no real option but to ‘like it or lump it”, use the data they still have available for search engine optimisation and hope the figure doesn't get any higher in the future.

GAP PPC misses important sale figure

Imagine the situation.  You're managing the PPC digital marketing campaign for your global retail client. However they haven't yet told you the specific discount they are applying at the post - Christmas Sale.

So you stick a couple of x's in for the meantime, with the intention of putting the real figure in later.

Oops.

The signs that Google is killing the SEO industry

It's funny that the Internet search engine that really defined the work of search engine optimisation practitioners over the last decade is now giving several signs that it wants to kill that industry off.

1. The removal of organic results from the top of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)
In a post a year ago, I commented on how little of the organic search engine results showed on the page of a normal user's screen for hotel-related searches. Back then I explained how very little actually appears above the 'page fold' on a decent size monitor and asked Google the question:

Are you trying to do away with the search engine optimisation industry entirely?

Well a year later the search giant has answered my question, by showing no organic results above the fold for certain search queries. E.g. "diabetes symptoms".

And with yesterday's announcement of 'Hummingbird' (the search giant's biggest change to their engine algorithm since the 2009 'Caffeine' overhaul), Google stated that  “around 90% of searches" would be affected. My initial take on this was "Great, I bet that means even more paid-for results appearing at the top of the page".

2. The removal of organic keyword information 
Unless you're in the SEO industry you might not have been following the recent developments in the ongoing [not provided] issue with Google.
To put this in a non-technical way... Google used to let's site owners see which words were driving organic search traffic to their site, via the Google Analytics tool they provide for free. However, over the course of a almost 2 years, the percentage of terms you get to see in GA has diminished to the point where now only 20 - 30% of the total are visible... and this is decreasing all the time.

Why? Well there has been various excuses for removing this incredibly valuable SEO source, from the generic "privacy" label through to the mention of "NSA snooping" (That's the National Security Agency, the internal spy organisation, similar in function to GCHQ, to us Brits).

However, despite all this bluster by the 'Big G' about protecting our privacy, Google still provides full disclosure about specific keyword usage to those who pay for it's AdWords Pay-Per-Click service. Thus putting a price on your privacy.

Retailisation - what it means to be a modern digital retailer

"We want to be more like a retailer"
"We need to think more like a retailer"
"Our business needs to evolve into more of a retail model"

Sound familiar? Well I'm hearing these sorts of quotes more and more often these day, and  not just from the obvious brands you would think. But from established product manufacturers and service providers, who realize that they need to up their game and drive people to consideration and purchase/subscription/take-up.
It seems that despite a recent Global economic melt-down driven by over-spending and an economic reliance on spending... retailisation seems to be the way forward. Everyone apparently now wants to be the next Amazon, Zappos or Play.com

So what does it actually mean to think and be more like a digital retailer these days? (Especially the major online or multi-channel retailers, who seem to epitomize this ethos).

Well here's my thoughts:

1. A good online retailer never stops looking for ways to improve what they have. This constant & iterative approach to goal optimisation means sites need to constantly change to increase their conversion ratio, average order value and other KPI's. eCommerce giants like Amazon, Argos, Tesco, etc. no longer launch major re-developments once in a while, but have a tried & tested process of smaller changes planned based on analytics & insight. These changes are then implemented in an  optimisation road-map as quickly as they can, with the idea of building up a picture of what works and what doesn't.
   This is also not just something that done on the homepage of your site,  where every product/service wants to get visibility, but on every page / template, including: landing pages, product pages, etc.
   
2. Use every opportunity to maximise each individual transaction. From useful up-sell and cross-sell opportunities through to optimised abandoned basket messages or a clever eCRM communication that pulls in dynamic product suggestions based on browsing history... you have the data, use it to persuade and encourage.
   
3. Carry out regular user experience site reviews, but ensure they are done from the perspective of a prospect/customer.
   Examples could include:
1. A new customer looking for product information
2. An soon-to-be customer looking for product validation
3. An existing customer looking for support or returns information
4. A lapsed customer who has forgotten their password.
   
4. A PPC & display budget should focus on those campaigns that deliver conversions and not just visits or other vanity metrics. In other words, deliver a bought media strategy that targets goals using input from you site analytics.
   (And if I hear one more senior exec say "we have X number of hits on our site" - I think I'll scream)

Retailisation isn't for everyone. But as more & more sites move beyond just the basics, I'm sure it is an approach that will continue to increase in use.

What is a good bounce rate?

This is an interesting question I thought I'd answer, primarily following a series of debates with friends and associates in the digital industry.

For those unsure what exactly is meant by the bounce rate, it is usually defined as those visitors to a site who only view one page of the same site in any one browsing session. The metric is calculated by dividing the total number of visitors by those who only view one page and then expressing this as a percentage. 

But is a high or low bounce rate a particularly good or bad thing? Let's take an example....

Imagine a company has a website that showcases their products and uses both SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) techniques as well as Google Adwords for Pay-per-click digital marketing. When investigating bounce rates from their digital analytics we see that visitors from organic search engine sources have an approximately 40% bounce rate. This compares with a rate of around 55% for those coming from pay per click adverts over the same period.

Surely the bounce rate generated from the organic source is healthier? As less people come to the site and disappear straight away, this must surely mean that they are 'better' users is some way?

Or to flip it around, doesn't it therefore follow that the paid PPC campaigns are delivering less value than those from search engines?

Not necessarily.  

 A different bounce rate from different acquisition sources makes sense if you consider these factors:

1.      The landing pages for paid and organic traffic could be different.
Search engine optimisation is not an exact science and depending upon the search terms used, the page displayed in the search engine results pages (SERPs) might well be different from the one you really want them to go to. This may also be different from search engine to search engine. If this is the case, it is likely your paid efforts are pointing visitors to the page of your choosing and one that may well be optimised for this purpose.
Note: this may well mean that the users’ paths to complete their required goals are different and could affect the conversion rate.

2.      The paid advert copy might be different from your organic listing
Now far be it if for me to suggest that any upstanding company would deliberately mis-represent their site in PPC adverts to potential visitors.. but I have seen examples where the Ad Words copy significantly differs from the content of the target page. Now I’m all for experimentation to understand the optimum copy in each circumstance… but when the paid advert content sets an expectation with the person about to click on an ad, don’t be surprised if they bounce straight out if the page doesn’t meet those expectations.

3.      Different visitors use different searching techniques.

I know that I have differing browsing behaviour depending upon: the frame of mind I'm in, the device I'm using and the amount of time I have. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. Online users also click on different paid placements depending on whether there are other PPC adverts displayed and the quality of the organic listings displayed alongside or below those precious Google Adwords ads.

Whatever your bounce rate, you should always take whatever steps you can, not just to minimise it, but to focus on optimising your collective set of site KPI’s and maximising the commercial opportunities your online presence gives you.

PPC : change nothing and nothing changes

I've helped a lot of organisations over the years optimise their digital advertising campaigns. This means I've seen a number of different ways of setting up and configuring paid search in services like Google AdWords, Microsoft's Bing Ads (previously Yahoo's own Search Marketing efforts) and others.

In several notable examples the PPC (pay per click) campaigns had seemingly reached their peak and the organisations concerned were happy to carry on doing the same thing day after day. In nearly every case the person managing the activity was happy to spend a very similar amount each day or month and deliver the same amount of visitors. (If I'm honest, they were almost scared to make changes once they found a set-up that worked).

Unsurprisingly, this infuriated the heck out of me for various reasons:

1. There is never an optimum way to build PPC campaigns. If you think you're doing the best paid search you ever could, then you're sadly mistaken.
Note: If your digital marketing agency says there is and that they've found it... They are trying to either get an easy ride or hide something

2. Google, Microsoft and the rest of the search engines never stop evolving their products, so failing up change your paid SEM will only risk leaving you with outdated approaches and techniques.

3. New competition comes into the market all the time (and some leave) and the current ones get smarter or more determined. More competition for the same terms will therefore push the bidding price up in systems such as AdWords.
Note: Your clever competition knows that change is good and how it can help to improve customer acquisition costs... Do you?

4. Websites change and therefore variables such as Google's Quality Score vary over time. If you're directing prospects to a site where the content and catalogue information is changing all the time, you can bet your QS is fluctuating too (it might even be changing when you have a static site!).

But more importantly than all if these should be the urge in every online marketer to improve on what is there... Not necessarily by making huge changes to your PPC account on a daily basis, but by the use of incremental changes and small experiments that test new ways and wording.

After all... Don't you want to learn and find out more about paid search? Do you want your skills to stand still in a market place that rewards talent? Don't you want to compete against your peers out there, all intent on bettering those CPC and conversion rates ?
(Or are you just happy to take your employer's or client's money for the short term?)

Still doing basic online attribution?

Online attribution? Well, imagine you have a transactional website and you didn't know which digital  channel was responsible for each of your goals or conversions (e.g. sales) . Finding a way to 'attribute' specific actions to specific marketing channels gives you a better understanding of how and where to spend your budget.

Currently a lot of website analysts and digital marketers apply a ‘last click wins’ approach  to measuring goals. This is where the last channel used gains all the credit for the acquisition (this could be: an online advert such as Google’s AdWords, a paid for link on a partner website, a targeted email, a review site looking to get affiliate revenue for a referral, or a listing in search engines , etc.).
Why do they do this? Well it is what your typical online analytics tools provide you out of the box and therefore it easy to understand and manage.
Note: Others actually apply a 'first click wins', which means awarding conversions to clicks that have not actually produced conversions... or in other words, not rewarding the last channel that did!

However some sites are now applying slightly more complex attribution models, to try to give some credit to the overall purchasing process and not just one click. Some apply an equal weighting to all the known/recorded‘ touch points’ or alternatively and with slightly more complexity they apply a simple gradual increased weighting up to the moment of purchase. These methods of equal attribution and escalating attribution both have their plus points (they are quite simple to measure and calculate) and their drawbacks...with the obvious caveat being that none is really a true picture of the value added by each online customer interaction.

Google Hotel Finder pushes results off the screen

Last week I had a quick outburst at Google for managing to take up most of my screen real estate with adverts. This previous posting was based upon a search for car insurance, which left only one organic search result on my 1366 x 768 laptop screen.

So, with the dark launching of Google's Hotel Finder application yesterday to much of the UK's searching traffic, I was keen to try it out. The subject of this particular functionality will probably be discussed in a later post, but for now I couldn't get past one obvious fact...

... that Google's new hotel search tool takes up a lot of space on the page. 

Just take the screen shot above as an obvious example. Here, following a search for "hotel in glasgow" I get a page displaying: pay-per-click adverts, a map showing the location of some hotels in Scotland's fair city and now the sponsored zone that allows me to enter my required date range and 4 price-based links.

But a quick image edit later, you can see what this page looks like if you remove all the adverts.

And this is being gracious, considering the map is a link to another page that has several PPC links in pole position on the page.

So, well done Google, for managing to completely push all organic results off of the screen of my pretty high-specification laptop. Are you trying to do away with the search engine optimisation industry entirely?

Google - just how much is adverts?

In yesterday's post I put up a screen grab of a Google results page for the term 'car insurance'.

Looking back at this image again, I was struck by just how much of the screen is actually covered by adverts. Or to put it another way... what happens if we take the same screen and remove the pay-per-click adverts and link to Google's sponsored promotion for its own car insurance aggregation product.

Quite telling isn't it?

The impact of Google aggregating insurance

I thought I'd follow up my earlier post, where I mentioned how the entrance of Google into the online UK insurance space was more of an issue for the aggregators than the individual insurers or brokers.
Note: those brands you think are insuring your car are actually fairly likely to be brokers, trying to earn a profit by selling you insurance from a smaller set of insurers.

In 2010 over 50% of all private car insurance was purchased with the use of the Internet, so it is only sensible to assume that has only increased over the last 18 months. It's therefore surprising that many insurance brands in the UK have made the decision not to have a large online marketing presence and take advantage of this traffic and growth. Sure, some companies are targeting organic or paid search online, but the major search terms are now pretty much dominated by the primary aggregators (MoneySupermarket, GoCompare, Compare The Market & Confused)*.

Either through a conscious decision, a lack of securing funds or some other factor, many insurance companies now accept the dominant role of the aggregators and pay them handsomely. In fact some even accept that up to 80% (or possibly more) of their business comes from the big players.

This current situation may not be permanent, but climbing above the big aggregation and comparison sites in either SEO or PPC is something that would take a lot of time, effort, skill and therefore money.

And this is why aggregators have more to lose now than the companies they provide customers to. They have more at stake when the biggest search engine places its own sponsored box just beneath the top two PPC adverts on a search results page. In effect giving itself a free third place listing and thus siting this service above the organic results.

For any other company this third place Pay-per-click position and top SEO place would cost a fortune to establish and maintain. Save nothing of the improved experience of a comparison service being built into the search journey.

*Sure some are spending significantly on TV (e.g. Direct Line, which is trying all it can to build brand loyalty in the run up to its proposed extraction from the now mainly Government-owned RBS group), but these cases are the exception.

Quality Score & on-page optimisation

Recently I've been a bit of a Quality Score fanatic, trying to get it as high as possible in my Google based PPC campaigns.

Although this has been a quest to find out the best way of optimising marketing budgets, it's also been a method for understanding just what does and doesn't affect on-page Quality Score.

As you probably know, Quality Score is calculated by Google via a mysterious combination of the advert, keywords used and the page you're directing users to. The more relevant Google thinks these are to each other, the better your QS. The best is 10 and the worst is 1. 

A quick point, if you want to find out your Quality Score, you can by looking at the 'keywords' tab in the 'campaigns' tab in your PPC account. Clicking on the white speech bubble  next to any keyword's status will reveal this calculated figure.

So what on-page attributes makes a difference? Well officially the three important factors affecting landing quality score are: relevant & original content, transparency and navigability (although page speed has been mentioned in several blogs, I'm uncertain about its actual influence in this metric).

Helpfully Google publishes its own advice on how you can optimise your site to make your Adwords efforts more cost effective:

http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2404197&from=46675&rd=1

Is your PPC agency working hard enough?

I've worked with paid search campaigns long enough now to have more than just a basic idea of how the main bid systems work. I've also learnt that there's numerous ways to waste money on PPC campaigns, when just a few changes can yield much better results.... Meaning your online marketing budget can go further. Much further!

This issue can sometimes be amplified when you use a digital agency to run your paid search campaigns. Especially when said agency gets paid a percentage of the budget for setting up and managing these campaigns.

For example, why wouldn't an agency bid on higher priced terms and use up the budget quicker? (Compared to structuring the account around a lot more mid to long tail terms).

There's also no point in the agency advising you when your search campaigns are yielding a low quality score. Why would they? An improved QS merely means there is more work to be done for the same amount of commission.

The cyclical nature of online marketing

One of my more typical observations is just how 'inter-connected' all
things digital have become. In other words.. when you affect one
thing, you stand a good chance of creating a knock-on effect with
something else.
Take this cyclical set as an example:
PR affects SEO
SEO affects Content
Content affects Pay-per-click (PPC)
Pay-per-click affects Conversion
Conversion affects Analytics
Analytics affects email
Email affects social media
Social Media affects PR
Have you seen any other similar cycles?

Google’s new AdWords algorithm

Ip

We all should know by that Google makes around 400 changes a year to its search algorithm (yes, that is over 1 change a day), with some such as the recent 'freshness' update being more significant than others.

However last month Google made a change to its AdWords algorithm which is significant in several regards
1. This affects Google's revenue if they get it wrong
2. This affects advertisers (e.g. those with fixed PPC budgets may find they get more or less for their money now)

What actually changed was an update to the 'Quality Score' factor that is given to each advert within Google's pay-per-click system. Quality Score in the past has previously been an arbitrary weighting that was given and that meant more experienced online marketers could mysteriously bid less than their competitors and still get a higher ranking in the search engine results pages (SERP's).

More and more is now gradually known about Quality Score (mainly thanks to Google posting blogs and videos on the subject) and it is now widely accepted that it is a mixture of three things:
a) the historical performance of the advert (what percentage of people actually clicked on it)
b) the relevance of the ad text to the search term (e.g. are you actually advertising for what people are seaching for)
c) the quality of the landing page (how relevant is the page you're actually taking users to?)

Google has now put a greater emphasis on the landing page quality, which to me makea a lot of sense. All too often you get taken from a PPC advert through to a page that has very little to do with the craftily-worded advert.

I just hope they also factor the page speed performance into account as well!

The Great Google PPC scam?

Does your company spend money each month on Google advertising? You know, that small little Pay-per-click campaign you started a couple of years back for a pound per month, that you now have to spend a few hundred quid a week or more on?

Well, according to one train of thought it could be costing you more than it needs to. And the company you have to blame is?.... Google.

Yes, that's right, the 'do no evil' company is possibility affecting your bottom line says Vinay Sahni:

https://plus.google.com/104371975904409493484/posts/XFYfF1jujdE#104371975904409493484/posts/XFYfF1jujdE

How?

Well, have you attended an Internet exhibition, bought an Internet industry magazine or even just purchased a business publication recently? And did a 'free Google advertising' or similar leaflet fall out of it offering you £50 or £70 of free keyword advertising?

Sahni states that this activity (e.g. giving ad vouchers to those who don't currently use PPC) is not just encouraging more people to use Google's advertising system, it is driving the price up.Yes, his theory is that the online auction of keywords is skewed when you let more people bid on the same terms and giving (potentially less-experienced) users into the system with what really is free money. Like a person who enters into an auction with someone else's wallet, the theory is that everyone else using their own money has to bid that bit more to beat them. So overall the rising tide of cost makes more money for Google at no loss.

Although a good theory, I don't actually buy this. Plus there are several possible flaws in the argument:

1. Google is actually losing money giving away vouchers (Assuming there are other bidders who are prepared to pay but were out-bid by someone with a free voucher)

2. Its not always about paying the highest price for some keywords. Often a more cost-effective campaign can be run by targetting lower positions (although you could argue that these are still more expensive with free bidders loose in the system)

3. The price of keywords will find its automatic level once the free bidders go away again (although its not often I've seen the price of keywords drop over time).

4. Sahni is forgetting Google's Quality Score weighting of PPC adverts (e.g. how well your advertising matches what users are looking for r how relevant your ad is). This secret scoring system is designed to reward PPC advertisers who take the effort to optimise their online advertising. It therefore means that those who know what they are doing don't necessarily have to bid more than those who are using a free voucher.

 

There's no proof that Google does NOT return the price of keywords back to the proper market price over time and indeed this would be a huge reputational and business mistake if it was ever the case.  However the fact remains that you should always monitor your PPC campaigns to ensure you are always getting the best return on your marketing spend.

 

Combatting cybersquatting with Per Per Click

I've been posting recently on the subject of cybersquatting and what you can proactively do about them (assess their impact , create a company domain name process and engage in some Search Engine Optimisation to gain the upper hand).

In this final posting I'm going to suggest an approach to use when all this activity has been exhausted... something that really you should only consider if the cybersquatters are using a domain that is affecting your brand and that has gained a position above your URL in search engine results on your key brand terms.

Pay-Per-click (PPC) activity is a great way to build traffic to your site (and generate online revenue, if that's your business model).
Firstly I should state that engaging in Pay Per Click adverting (PPC) in search engines has no effect on SEO efforts. However it can also be use used to detract visitors away from your competition and also therefore cybersquatters. 

This is not an entirely guaranteed way of distracting users and a lot of search engine users automatically (subconsciously) screen out the adverts in search results in their mind (e.g. those across the top and down the right hand side in Google, etc. are not even seen by the users)  and you should also work to improve your organic site rankings via a proper SEO approach.

Note:
Obviously on no account would I recommend or even suggest paying to advertise on the squatted site, it just encourages this sort of activity. In fact some of these sort of sites even make some of their money by having PPC links in them as extensions of the search engine advertising mechanism. You should therefore  ensure that your PPC campaign doesn't use this extended network of advertising and is restricted just to the main search engine you want to target.

Online market shifts from PPC to meta search

An article from Travolution caught my eye recently.
http://www.travolution.co.uk/articles/2009/11/10/3005/online-travel-companies-shift-marketing-away-from-google-adwords-says-expert.html

Apparently there is a view that some of the online travel marketing spend is moving away from PPC (Per per click) advertising in the search giants to metasearch travel sites (e.g. Kayak).

According to Wouter Blok from European Hotel site http://www.easytobook.com/ he has seen conversions quadruple from such sites.

However, is this conversion rate standard for the rest of the industry or has Mr Blok just not used PPC correctly?

Click fraud

I've been watching the rates of click fraud rise and fall over the last year with some suprise. Back in the middle of last year there was an increase in click fraud to 17.1% in the fourth quarter of 2008 compared with the same period in 2007 having 16.6%.

But during 2009 click fraud rates (the percentage of clicks on your adverts that are not genuine customers) have dropped! In fact, they seem to have declined by about 25% over the last reported 6 months to a figure of 12.7%.

What does click fraud mean for the average company that uses Pay Per Click advertising?
It means you're more likely to spend more money for less real traffic!

But why does this happen?
Well there has apparently been an increase in the use of click farms. These are groups of people paid to click on your adverts by:

1. Site owners who want to make more money from their advertising inventory
2. Your competititors who want you to spend more money (or the same money for less real numbers of visitors/customers)

But why would click fraud rates drop in a recession? Are the less scrupulous companies also feeling the pinch and therefore are less likely to be able to afford click farm rates?