Performics Performance Marketing Blog: SEM, SEO, Social & Display

Searches for Discontinued Products can Still Drive Revenue for Retailers

Posted by Stacy Gross, Account Manager

Many retailers think that if a product has been discontinued, they should no longer bid on that product name, model number, or other keywords related to that product in paid search.  However, this is not always the case.  A lot of retailers are leaving money on the table by pulling paid search campaigns for discontinued products.

For example, one of Performics’ global technology clients recently discontinued 7 product models and rolled out 7 new replacement models.  There was still searcher demand for the old models because some searchers didn’t know that the new models existed yet.  Instead of putting the old model keywords on pause, we continued to bid on the old model terms, which consisted of 100+ keywords.  We changed the ad copy for the terms to let users know that the product they were searching for had been discontinued and that there was a new replacement model.  The “sunset” ad copy also included short descriptions of the new model, in addition to language encouraging consumers to upgrade from the discontinued model they searched for to the new one.  The ads were redirected to the new landing pages built for the replacement models. 

Custom Landing Pages Enhance Marketing Effectiveness

Posted by Julia Cardis, Senior Manager, Landing Page Optimization

Effective landing pages serve as an extension of your ad, in which they engage and invite consumers to further interact with your site.  Performics highly recommends the use of custom landing pages rather than a generic home/category page or deep-linked category/product pages; custom landing pages are tailored to your target audience.

Download our full Custom Landing Pages White Paper to read about benefits and strategies for developing custom landing pages.

A Few Good Tools for Keyword Mining

Posted by Emily Helander, Program Manager

As search continually evolves, so must your keyword list.  Below are a few tools that you can reference to help expand your keyword list to increase search performance.  These tools may work best in developing more long term keywords/low traffic keywords.  These types of keywords are important to develop as they’re likely to be keywords searchers use as they enter further into the conversion/purchase funnel.

Internal Search Data

 

If you’re tracking what users are searching for once they reach your site, this data can provide great insight into gaps in your paid search keyword list.  These terms may uncover opportunities for new campaigns.  They can also help make the case for developing custom landing pages for popular search terms.  Internal search data should be evaluated quarterly to provide an idea of seasonal changes in searcher behavior. 

Search Happenings

Posted by JC Longbottom, Associate New Business Manager

From the Engines:

·         New Google Flipper easy way to read Google News.  Google News now searchable by article author name.

·         Kayak calls Bing a copy-cat.

Other Topics of Interest:

·         MySpace layoffs.

·         New iPhone Spotlight Search.  What the new iPhone means to marketers.

·         New “save a dog” Facebook app.

·         Marketers closely watch House behavioral targeting hearings.

·         Google Suggest makes inappropriate suggestions, gets shut down in China.

·         Danny Sullivan: Twitter may be sending more traffic to your site than you think.  Twitter abuzz with celebrity deaths.

Some Fun Stuff:

·         Flamingos with severe identity issues.

 

A Squirrel Has More Followers than You on Twitter

Posted by Dan Malachowski, Product Marketing Manager

Unless you have over 5,700 followers on Twitter, Common Squirrel has more than you.  Being a squirrel, Common Squirrel doesn’t have much to tweet about, but people still love him.  In fact, Common Squirrel’s most insightful tweet is “dig dig dig dig dig.”  That’s it.  And Common Squirrel isn’t the only squirrel tweeting.  There’s Butters the Squirrel, who has 500+ followers, Unique Squirrel from Madison Square Park in NYC and Red Squirrel, who doesn’t like grey squirrels.  But Common Squirrel clearly has the squirrels on Twitter market cornered. 

So how do you gain a following as large as Common Squirrel’s?  Here are a few tips:

·         Give Something Away: Threadless gives away free tee-shirts on Thursdays by encouraging people to #threadless them with their favorite Threadless tee; they have almost 700,000 followers.  Maggianos gave away free food.  I love their fettuccine alfredo.

Webinar Tomorrow! 1 PM EDT: Online Holiday Retail 2009: Tips, Tactics and Timelines for Success

Speakers: Eli Goodman & Matt Miller

Is your business ready for the year-end holiday sales season?

Whether you're a multi-channel retailer or you're selling purely online, the holiday retail season can be critical. It's not too early to start thinking about it now.  This webcast will help you prepare by giving you planning tools and an understanding of what you need to do -- and when -- in order to succeed online during the 2009 holiday selling season.

Eli Goodman, Search Evangelist at comScore, will give an overview of the state of online retail and what the experts are predicting for the holiday season, highlighting several vertical markets in the process.

Matt Miller, Director, Vertical Solutions at Performics, will give specific tips and timelines that retailers can follow in the months building up to the holidays. He'll also go over opportunities in search marketing, and how to take advantage of them on a retail site.

In this webcast we’ll learn:

• Current forecasts for the 2009 holiday shopping season
• Which retail categories performed better than others
• Specific tips and tactics for retail success — from understanding customer needs to managing landing pages
• Planning for the holidays - timelines/milestones for the next six months

If your business includes any online sales during the holiday shopping season, don't miss this one -- you'll gain valuable hands-on advice on how to maximize your success.

Register now - it's free!

Think Dashboards to Keep Your Eye on the Big Picture

Posted by Tara Kryck, Group Account Director

 

Often times, marketers get lost in the weeds when it comes to analyzing performance reports.  This can cause them to lose sight of the bigger goals and data points critical to the bottom line.  To help prevent this, I recommend utilizing both a short-term and long-term performance tracking dashboard.  Both dashboards should include pre-determined KPIs– trends of actionable data that key stakeholders really care about.  Search marketing reporting tools must be highly advanced and allow for deep visibility into trends to uncover hidden opportunities from insights into searcher behavior.  At the same time, this data needs to be transformed into easily understandable, executive-friendly business dashboards.  Intuitive dashboard views of particular key metrics empower marketers to make well-informed optimization decisions quickly.  Dashboards also facilitate identifying and correcting performance trends before they become an issue. 

Dual Paid Search Strategy (ROI & Branding) is the Way to Go for Retailers

Posted by Lauren Woiteshek, Account Manager

Retailers should have a ROI-focused search strategy, but during important promotions and seasonal events, they should also invest in high funnel generic keywords to drive brand awareness.  This branding strategy can vary depending on the particular promotion and budget, but should be used to reach consumers who are in the research phase of the purchase cycle.  Branding via paid search is particularly important given the current state of the economy, as consumers are spending more time researching and looking for the best product or deal before they buy.  The effect of a branding strategy is that you’re targeting customers new to your brand, or even new products to existing customers.  This strategy should also be used when you’re launching a new brand or expanding into a new market.

A branding campaign should be managed differently than an ROI program.  The main focus of the strategy is volume.  Main success KPIs should be impressions, clicks and impression share.  Keywords should be managed by position; you should aim for the top of the page (positions 1-5).  You need to be seen on the first page of the SERP in order to achieve sufficient visibility for your brand.  Copy in a branding strategy needs to be creative and catchy.  Brand messaging and the value proposition must be highlighted.

Expanded Search Query Report Reveals Opportunities to Improve Campaign Performance

Posted by Jenna Sheeran, Account Director

Before

Historically, Google has always lumped low volume traffic terms into groups (“other unique queries”) in the Search Query Report.  Search marketers were not able to see each of these “other unique queries” broken out by how many clicks each term drove.  In some situations, these groups could account for a large percentage of traffic volume for the campaign.  Not having transparency into exactly how much traffic each of the “other unique queries” drove impaired optimization, thus negatively affecting the overall performance of the account. 

Search Happenings

Posted by JC Longbottom, Associate New Business Manager

From the Engines:

·         Hunch: a new decision engine.  Hunch told me to eat my Cheetos with chopsticks.

·         Engines race to deliver real-time search.

Other Topics of Interest:

·         Promote your social media presence.

·         Twitter’s tremendous growth levels off in May; Facebook keeps growing and finally outpaces MySpace in the US.  Users rush for Facebook vanity URLs.

·         Is Google scared of Bing? Google markets itself with new explore Google Search page to illustrate that Google’s always had Bing features that users like.  Early Bing share stats from comScore, compete and Hitwise.  Bing vs. Google eye tracking.

·         Google and DoubleClick ad platforms to combine.

·         Possible behavioral-ad targeting legislation to come down this fall.

·         A state department official emailed Twitter to request that they put off scheduled maintenance due to the crucial role Twitter was playing in the election in Iran.

Some Fun Stuff:

·         “We’re closing up.” “Thanks for letting me know, see you tomorrow.”

·         Two outlaw cows flee ranch and cross state lines.