Top 7 Things Your Search Marketing Agency Should Be Focusing On Now
Your marketing budget is being squeezed. Your sales cycle is getting longer. You've got to wring every last nickel's worth of benefit from your marketing efforts, and track the return of every effort to boot.
What's a frustrated marketer to do?
One partner who should be singing "Lean on Me" is your search marketing agency. Doing the same ol' same ol' just won't cut it anymore. While search marketing is still one of the most effective and efficient marketing tactics, like everything else, it needs to do more with less, help move prospects along the buying cycle, and be more measurable than ever before.
Assuming your agency has already optimized your website for search engines, and is successfully managing your pay-per-click campaign, what else should they be focusing on in today's challenging environment?
1. Social Media. Let's get this one out of the way first. Yes, there's been a lot of buzz and you may even be tired of hearing about it. But in addition to the myriad marketing, customer service and research benefits that social media offers companies, there are also numerous search engine optimization benefits. Social media provides (a) more online content, such as profiles, that can be optimized and take up real estate in the search engine results, (b) ratings and tags from other participants that give the search engines more information about your content and trustworthy votes, and (c) links to your corporate site, which can boost its rankings.
2. Reputation Monitoring. Let's say a prospect searches for your company or product brand name and sees negative mentions in the search engine results. Maybe a disgruntled former employee posted on a blog, or an unhappy customer wrote a negative online review. Many companies have seen their website traffic, leads and sales fall off due to an online reputation hit like this. Your search marketing firm should be keeping an eye on the top search engine results in order to see any negative mentions before your prospects (or investors) do. By using social media and other tactics, they may be able to push the negative content down off the first page of results, where fewer people will see it.
3. Custom Pay-Per-Click Landing Pages. Where do searchers go after they click on one of your paid listings? To your home page, or a page deeper on your site? Many companies can double or even triple their conversion rates by instead building custom landing pages for pay-per-click visitors. These landing pages tie directly in with the keyword the searcher typed into the search box, and have a lead form or a purchasing method right on the page, eliminating the need for the prospect to click around multiple pages on your site (and potentially get lost or lose interest) before converting.
4. Usability. Similarly, the entire site should be analyzed by a usability expert. Yes, search marketing is centered on driving more people to your website. But what good does that do if they don't take the action you want them to take once they're there? If you want to double the number of leads or customers your site generates, you can either double the website traffic, or double the conversion rate. It's generally easier to do the latter (although, ideally, you'll strive for both!). Adding more calls to action and credibility-building elements, reducing friction along the visitor's path, clearly and quickly communicating your value proposition to the visitor, etc., can make a significant difference.
5. Targeting All Phases of the Buying Cycle. People don't always convert the first time they visit a website, particularly for big-ticket items or business-to-business purchases. Your search marketing agency should keep this in mind when designing PPC campaigns and site content to target searchers at different stages of the buying cycle. Many searchers start out using broad terms to do research ("widget information"), then narrowing it down as they compare ("red widget reviews"), then getting really specific once they know what they want to buy ("red widget model xyz"). Is your site prominently placed in the search engine results for all types of terms, and does the content on those pages address the searcher's different needs at each stage?
6. Tracking Phone Call Conversions. Some of your sales or leads will come through an online conversion - an ecommerce purchase or a web form being filled out. But some folks will call instead. There's now phone call tracking technology that allows marketers to trace callers back to how they found the website - did they click on a Google pay-per-click ad before coming to the site and calling, or a Yahoo organic listing, or what? Needless to say, this is incredibly valuable data. We've found that, on average, only one third of search engine-generated conversions come in online - fully two thirds come in via phone. So anyone not tracking phone call sources may be making important decisions based on just one third of the data they could have at their fingertips.
7. Bridging the Sales Gap. Many sites, particularly for business-to-business firms, serve a lead generation purpose. As noted, it's easy to track conversions, or leads, back to their source, whether it be a search engine or another online marketing campaign. But often, as that lead flows into SalesForce, or whatever CRM system the marketer uses, there's a gap and the source of the lead is lost. It used to be acceptable for search marketing agencies to just report on the number of leads they generated. Not anymore - clients are (rightfully) demanding to know how many sales, and how much revenue, their search marketing partner has produced. A new technique now allows valuable data (such as the search engine and keyword that the lead used, as well as whether they clicked on an organic or paid listing) to stay attached to the contact information right into SalesForce. This allows companies to know the true ROI of their search marketing efforts.
As Isaac Asimov and others have noted, "The only constant is change." Economies and markets change, and search engine marketing certainly never stands still. Smart marketers will ensure that their search marketing agency continues to evolve and adapt so budgets and returns are both maximized.
What's a frustrated marketer to do?
One partner who should be singing "Lean on Me" is your search marketing agency. Doing the same ol' same ol' just won't cut it anymore. While search marketing is still one of the most effective and efficient marketing tactics, like everything else, it needs to do more with less, help move prospects along the buying cycle, and be more measurable than ever before.
Assuming your agency has already optimized your website for search engines, and is successfully managing your pay-per-click campaign, what else should they be focusing on in today's challenging environment?
1. Social Media. Let's get this one out of the way first. Yes, there's been a lot of buzz and you may even be tired of hearing about it. But in addition to the myriad marketing, customer service and research benefits that social media offers companies, there are also numerous search engine optimization benefits. Social media provides (a) more online content, such as profiles, that can be optimized and take up real estate in the search engine results, (b) ratings and tags from other participants that give the search engines more information about your content and trustworthy votes, and (c) links to your corporate site, which can boost its rankings.
2. Reputation Monitoring. Let's say a prospect searches for your company or product brand name and sees negative mentions in the search engine results. Maybe a disgruntled former employee posted on a blog, or an unhappy customer wrote a negative online review. Many companies have seen their website traffic, leads and sales fall off due to an online reputation hit like this. Your search marketing firm should be keeping an eye on the top search engine results in order to see any negative mentions before your prospects (or investors) do. By using social media and other tactics, they may be able to push the negative content down off the first page of results, where fewer people will see it.
3. Custom Pay-Per-Click Landing Pages. Where do searchers go after they click on one of your paid listings? To your home page, or a page deeper on your site? Many companies can double or even triple their conversion rates by instead building custom landing pages for pay-per-click visitors. These landing pages tie directly in with the keyword the searcher typed into the search box, and have a lead form or a purchasing method right on the page, eliminating the need for the prospect to click around multiple pages on your site (and potentially get lost or lose interest) before converting.
4. Usability. Similarly, the entire site should be analyzed by a usability expert. Yes, search marketing is centered on driving more people to your website. But what good does that do if they don't take the action you want them to take once they're there? If you want to double the number of leads or customers your site generates, you can either double the website traffic, or double the conversion rate. It's generally easier to do the latter (although, ideally, you'll strive for both!). Adding more calls to action and credibility-building elements, reducing friction along the visitor's path, clearly and quickly communicating your value proposition to the visitor, etc., can make a significant difference.
5. Targeting All Phases of the Buying Cycle. People don't always convert the first time they visit a website, particularly for big-ticket items or business-to-business purchases. Your search marketing agency should keep this in mind when designing PPC campaigns and site content to target searchers at different stages of the buying cycle. Many searchers start out using broad terms to do research ("widget information"), then narrowing it down as they compare ("red widget reviews"), then getting really specific once they know what they want to buy ("red widget model xyz"). Is your site prominently placed in the search engine results for all types of terms, and does the content on those pages address the searcher's different needs at each stage?
6. Tracking Phone Call Conversions. Some of your sales or leads will come through an online conversion - an ecommerce purchase or a web form being filled out. But some folks will call instead. There's now phone call tracking technology that allows marketers to trace callers back to how they found the website - did they click on a Google pay-per-click ad before coming to the site and calling, or a Yahoo organic listing, or what? Needless to say, this is incredibly valuable data. We've found that, on average, only one third of search engine-generated conversions come in online - fully two thirds come in via phone. So anyone not tracking phone call sources may be making important decisions based on just one third of the data they could have at their fingertips.
7. Bridging the Sales Gap. Many sites, particularly for business-to-business firms, serve a lead generation purpose. As noted, it's easy to track conversions, or leads, back to their source, whether it be a search engine or another online marketing campaign. But often, as that lead flows into SalesForce, or whatever CRM system the marketer uses, there's a gap and the source of the lead is lost. It used to be acceptable for search marketing agencies to just report on the number of leads they generated. Not anymore - clients are (rightfully) demanding to know how many sales, and how much revenue, their search marketing partner has produced. A new technique now allows valuable data (such as the search engine and keyword that the lead used, as well as whether they clicked on an organic or paid listing) to stay attached to the contact information right into SalesForce. This allows companies to know the true ROI of their search marketing efforts.
As Isaac Asimov and others have noted, "The only constant is change." Economies and markets change, and search engine marketing certainly never stands still. Smart marketers will ensure that their search marketing agency continues to evolve and adapt so budgets and returns are both maximized.
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