Aug
14th

Keyword Density of Search Marketing Blogs

Posted by Duncan on August 14, 2008 at 9:10 am

Today we’ll take a unique look at the recent hot topics in Oneupweb’s StraightUpSearch blog. Using a tool called Wordle we’ll get a word cloud visual representation of the words used most often on the current StraightUpSearch homepage. Take a look at the image below. Pretty cool stuff.

I need to give a shout out to Lee Odden for bringing this to our attention. Lee recently featured Wordle in his TopRank blog. His post looks at some other highly visited search engine marketing blogs: Word Visualization on Search Marketing Blogs.

StraightUpSearch and other top search marketing blogs have high keyword density on search marketing and social marketing terminology. I am pleased to see many current events listed in the StraightUpSearch blog as well. Words pop out related to the Olympics and the Presidential race.

Spend a minute looking at our results and those in Odden’s. Drop us a comment about the trends most apparent to you, or whatever else strikes you.

Thank you Wordle for giving us an out-of-the-box way of looking at ourselves in the mirror.

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Feb
26th

Microsoft Announces Engagement Mapping

Posted by admin on February 26, 2008 at 8:03 am

Watch out Sergey and Larry, Microsoft has a few more tricks up its sleeve.

Between juggling acquisitions and forceful company takeovers, Microsoft announced Monday, at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual meeting in Phoenix, its new initiative for measuring search marketing effectiveness. Microsoft plans to roll out the Beta version of “Engagement Mapping” on March 1st.

Engagement Mapping will try to map all internet interactions that influenced a consumer into purchasing a product online. The program will monitor the different online touch points and interactions a consumer encounters before completing a purchase. Search marketers will soon know if an ad being viewed multiple times on multiple sites influenced a consumer into their sale.

After acquiring aQuantive for $6 billion last year, current search marketer methods for measuring internet advertising effectiveness appear to be obsolete in Microsoft’s eyes.

In a recent Reuters article, Brian McAndrews, the Senior Vice President of Advertiser and Publisher Solutions at Microsoft, stated, “The ‘last ad clicked’ is an outdated and flawed approach because it essentially ignores all prior interactions the
consumer has with a marketer’s message.”

Will search marketing as we know it soon be a thing of the past thanks to Engagement Mapping? We’ll find out next month.

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Mar
30th

Web Analytics & Search Engine Marketing Analysis – They're Not the Same

Posted by Vern on March 30, 2007 at 4:43 pm

Hardly a week goes by without an announcement of the latest and greatest web analytics package.

Yahoo, Google, Omniture and others have done a terrific job of developing tools to mine every last bit of performance data from website traffic and paid search campaigns. Some companies package their offerings in a more intuitive wrapping than others, but they are essentially the same.

Looking to spend five figures a month on the just released, latest and greatest analytics package? Whoa – Don’t put the cart before the horse.

The real key to success in paid search marketing is in the human powered interpretation of the data spewed forth by the Omnitures of the world. Having all the data on the planet at your fingertips is useless without thoughtful, reasoned, intelligent examination and analysis. Numbers aren’t enough, regardless of the pretty interface and graphs.

What do the numbers mean? What are they telling us about trends? How can they help us identify the causes of problems or the reasons for our success? For example: What factors contributed to a drop in conversions this month over last. Then: How do we fix what’s broken? How do we improve?

Analytics show us the past in a myriad of color-saturated graphs, charts and tables. The best they can do is display real-time data. They can’t tell us what campaign changes and adjustments to make. It’s the analyst interpreting the data that’s the real star here.

I argue that we all are in danger of allowing too much data to cloud our thinking and decision-making. Settle on a handful of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and watch them like a hawk for shifts in trends.

Look at the big picture first. Resist the temptation to dive in at a granular level. What you’re looking for may be more obvious than you think. Often, looking at site performance issues may tell you all you need to know.

When assembling resources for your PPC effort, look first for experienced, knowledgeable, creative and thoughtful analysts. Then give them the tools they need to work their magic. Your bottom line will benefit and your board of directors will thank you for it.

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Jul
27th

From the Frying Pan to the Buyer

Posted by admin on July 27, 2006 at 4:58 pm

Prior to Oneupweb, I worked for a medium-sized retailer of home-décor products. In addition to brick & mortar, the company mailed several million catalogs annually, and had an extensive offering of products available for purchase online.

As online marketing efforts increased, so too did the online store’s sales figures – that correlation was as natural as flowers in spring. What wasn’t as easy to quantify was the impact of online marketing initiatives on in-store & catalog sales.

This quandary is all too familiar to multi-channel retailers of any size or industry. Just how much of your in-store and catalog revenue can be traced to your online marketing efforts?

I consider myself a rather circumspect shopper. It’s not uncommon for me to scour the internet for user reviews, and garner prices from at least three different retailers before deciding whether or not to buy something as simple as a frying pan. What’s worse is that after all of that online research, I will likely end up buying the item at a store where I can pick it up, hold it in my hands, and generally become one with the pan. I’m a “hands on” kinda guy.

For that buying behavior, I apologize to every retail marketer on Earth.

A couple of excellent ways of tracking online spend-to-call-center sales performance is to incorporate some unique landing pages with specific phone numbers, or Google’s new Click To Call program (beta, of course) which directly connects search engine users with your call-center operators via telephone. These ideas only help to solve a part of the problem. There’s still no easy way to measure the influences of online marketing spending on your in-store sales.

A marketer’s best answer just may be an old solution — research.

Survey customers online and offline, pre and post purchase. Test various rebate & coupon-based incentive programs, then analyze the response data. Obtain panel-based or focus group data to examine customers’ buying behavior. And spend some time with the results.

While individual conversion-level reporting may be the stuff of dreams, employing a more holistic approach to budget analysis is one of the first, and probably the most important steps toward tying brick & mortar revenue to your online marketing budget. It may not catch all my “pan in the hand” purchases, but it should help with your more typical consumer.

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Jun
22nd

The PPC Numbers Game

Posted by admin on June 22, 2006 at 12:50 pm

The following statement will likely send my seventh grade math teacher reeling:

I love numbers and everything about them.

Sorry that it took nearly 20 years for me to realize this, Mr. Gioe.

So, yeah I didn’t always have this great affinity for numbers, stats, figures, or whatever you want to call them. I was one of those junior high kids shrieking to his parents “when am I EVER going to use the Pythagorean Theorem in real life?!”

Well, last weekend while rigging my sailboat, guess what, I unleashed my inner Pythagoras and calculated the length of the hypotenuse of a triangle on the back of an envelope.

At some point after the seventh grade it occurred to me that, when used for good, numbers can solve problems and communicate information like nothing else. Perhaps working as a database manager directly under the CFO of a mid-sized retailer awakened in me this deep, abiding appreciation for all that numbers can do. I know my time here at Oneupweb has further cemented this affinity.

In the world of paid search, numbers are everything. Sure things like keywords, ad creative and landing pages are important too, but without solid statistical reporting, the performance of these elements goes unchecked.

There’s been much discussion (consternation might be a better word) about marketing metrics, different analytics tools, why they don’t match, and who’s right.

As much as I love reviewing, comparing and analyzing campaign results, getting mired in the game of “which analytics tool is right” usually amounts to a bunch of wasted time.

Employing different analytics systems is not a bad thing so long as the person interpreting all of the results has a good understanding of the theory and methodology behind each different marketing analytics platform. Rather than trying to figure out who is “right,” consider each tool for what it really is: one company’s measurement of your campaign’s success based on their practices and algorithms.

Evaluating data from each analytics source and using it to establish actionable information and trends is a far more effective use of time than trying to figure out why your WebTrends figures don’t match your Google Analytics numbers.

My crystal ball might be a little hazy on this one, but I don’t see the entire search marketing industry agreeing upon one, standardized system of metrics anytime soon. Until that happens, marketing professionals the world over will be well served by tabling the old apples versus oranges argument and realizing that if the fruit is fresh and delicious, someone – somewhere is doing something right.

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