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

Search Happenings

Posted by Dan Malachowski, Product Marketing Manager

From the Engines:

·         New mail, messenger and search products from Yahoo!  Mail is more social.

Other Topics of Interest:

·         Tweets will soon include longitude & latitude of where the tweet came from.  The feature is opt-in, but may still create some security issues since your followers will know exactly where you are.  Be sure to opt-out if you’re tweeting instead of working.

·         Retailers spend more money on search.  13% year over year increase may indicate recession is coming to a close just before the holiday shopping season kicks off.

Some Fun Stuff:

·         Dogs have mastered the Moscow subway, but still don’t know their tails are part of their bodies.

·         Times are hard.  Man sells himself on eBay.

·         Loch Ness Monster spotted on Google Earth.  Bigfoot found in Google directory.

Google’s “Caffeine” Engine – Kind of a Big Deal

Posted by Sam Battin, Senior Search Strategist

Google is currently testing its next generation natural search infrastructure.  Searchers can check out “Caffeine” and offer feedback directly to Google.  Performics has spent some time testing the Caffeine engine, and the results are interesting.  First of all, our testing has confirmed what others have found – there appears to be more sites in the Caffeine index than in the regular Google version, and the results are delivered faster.

For example, in a single-word search query like “Sneakers”, Caffeine says that it has 20,800,000 results, while regular Google has 18,700,000 results.  This does not mean that Google has developed a different set of search robots just for Caffeine.  Instead, it likely means that Caffeine is better able to review its own index and find more pages with words that are likely related to the original query.

The Holiday Season is almost Here! Are you Delivering Content that Drives High Conversions?

Please join us for a Webinar on How to Improve Conversion Rates with Relevant Content  
Thursday, August 27, 2009

2:00PM Eastern/1:00PM Central

Register Today!

 

All attendees will be entered in a drawing to win a FREE Landing Page Analysis.

 

Matt Miller, Director, Vertical Solutions, and Julia Cardis, Senior Manager, Conversion Optimization, will share strategies on how to develop effective landing pages to capture more consumers, sales and leads during the 2009 holiday season. Matt and Julia will help Stanley’s Sweaters, a fictitious online pet supply retailer, craft landing pages for their most popular holiday segment - dog toys - in an effort to connect and convert potential consumers into buyers.

 

In this webinar, you and Stanley’s Sweaters will learn:

·         Four critical questions that landing pages must address

·         What makes a “good” landing page?

·         Benefits of effective landing pages

·         Important user experience strategies

·         Different approaches to landing page testing

 

Stanley and his team are already hard at work to prepare for the holiday season – are you?

 

 

Search Advertisers at Cross-Roads; Continue with ROI Focus or Go After Market Share

Performics "Same Store" online retail data shows strong first half efficiency gains, July data shows these advertisers increasing spend

Performics today released aggregate data from its clients ‟same store‟ online retail search marketing campaigns, illustrating important findings for advertisers, including an increase in first half ROI and a jump in July search spend. Signs point toward a possible shift among advertisers to increase search investment through the balance of 2009 and the holiday season.

For Performics' same store online retailers, search advertising ROI increased 8.8 percent year on year through June, including a 13.5 percent ROI jump in May. Helping to drive this was a $.05 or 8 percent drop in average cost per click (CPC) as advertisers pulled back on investment levels as well as an increase in average order value (AOV) of 3.3 percent. In July, for the first time in 2009, these advertisers increased their search investment year on year with spend increasing 13 percent versus July 2008.

"Performics has systems in place to measure the effectiveness of search strategies our teams have employed with our clients to contain costs, drive efficiencies and AOV," said Nick Beil, CEO of Performics. "For these online retail clients, we focused on efficiency in the first half of the year and saw significant gains. In July, we saw a shift in strategy to loosen cost containment efforts and go after transaction volume and market share. A key question for search advertisers for the balance of '09 is whether to focus on efficient sales or sales growth. Consumer demand will drive this decision and, as the recent back-to-school numbers show, folks are still watching their dollars carefully."

Search Happenings

Posted by JC Longbottom, Associate New Business Manager

From the Engines:

·         comScore: Bing share rises from 8.4% to 8.9% in July, but Google searchers are more loyal.

·         Yahoo!’s social push.

Other Topics of Interest:

·         White House sends unsolicited emails.

·         10 tips for Facebook Fan pages.

·         Twitter v. Facebook in real-time search.

·         National Retail Federation back to school purchase study.

·         Facebook: demand-generation machine.

Some Fun Stuff:

·         12 most annoying types of Facebook users.

Social.icio.us Thursday: Facebook Enhancements Continue to Try to Kill Twitter

Posted by Micheline Sabatté, Product Marketing Manager, Performance Media

Yesterday’s Silicon Alley Insider “Facebook's Twitter-Killing iPhone App Revealed!” post by Nicholas Carlson does a wonderful job summarizing the strategic steps Facebook has taken in an effort to bring down social media rival and everyone’s favorite micro-blogging service, Twitter. The article focused on the new Facebook iPhone app that will improve the user experience of Facebook on mobile devices, namely the popular iPhone.

In addition, Facebook’s product enhancements over the past year have included:

• Redesigned interface with tabbed profile and pages design
• Redesigned (and then redesigned again) home page
• Following companies like friends
• Vanity URL’s (www.facebook.com/yourname)
• Making status updates visible to everyone, not just your friends
• Allowing users to make unlimited connections
• Real-time updates (focus on the “stream” / “news feed”)
• Real-time search
• Live event coverage
• Promoting celebrities and becoming fans of celebrities
• SMS-enabled updates

A/B vs. Multivariate Testing: Which One Is Better?

Posted by Julia Cardis, Senior Manager, Conversion Optimization

When it comes to testing, which method is better: A/B or Multivariate?  The optimizer in me wants to answer: “I don’t care—just test!”  But there are pros and cons with each approach—and ultimately, it depends on what your testing objectives are, and what you’re actually testing.

A Quick Explanation of Testing Techniques

A/B testing is the more straight-forward of the two testing approaches.  There is a champion and a challenger.  The winner is determined by performance of a single action—usually purchase or form submission.  But other actions, like entry rate to the site or use of a store locator, can also be used to determine the “winner.”  While  conducting A/B tests among existing pages to see which performs better (home page vs. category page vs. deep-link page) is a good starting point, Performics recommends testing custom landing pages for paid media traffic sources. (See our blog posting, Custom Landing Pages Enhance Marketing Effectiveness).

In multivariate testing, different elements on a page are tested (headline, image, long form or short form, no navigation or full navigation, call to action 1 or call to action 2, 3, or 4.  And so on.)  The number and combination of elements will determine the number of page variations and duration of the test—the more elements, the more combinations and the longer the test duration.  When the winner is determined, however, you’ll know not only which page combination is the winner, but how the individual elements contributed to the outcome.  More complex (and therefore more resources are required to launch the test) than a simple A/B test, but it’s easier to identify the element or elements that contribute to improvements. 

Pharmaceutical Companies, the FDA and Paid & Natural Search Marketing

Posted by Emily Helander, Program Manager

Given FDA guidelines, marketing for pharmaceutical companies often involves more complications.  With the growth of search marketing, the FDA has begun to bring pharmaceutical paid search campaigns under greater scrutiny.  In March 2009, 14 letters were issued to large pharmaceutical companies regarding paid search ads for various drugs omitting risk information, minimizing risk information, inadequately communicating indications, overstating efficacy and failing to use the full pharmaceutical name. 

Obviously the character limits associated with paid search advertising pose a challenge to these requirements.  In response, some pharmaceutical companies have begun using ads that do not contain any claims about the drug but are instead “reminder ads.”  These ads contain the drug’s pharmaceutical name and include phrases like “Learn More” and “Visit the Official Site.”  Similarly, some pharmaceutical companies are using un-branded ads.  These ads speak to the condition as well as learning about symptoms and treatment options, but do not mention the drug itself.  These ads contain unbranded display URLs that can either link to an unbranded site or the drug’s Web site (containing risk information) via a vanity URL.  Other options, such as a mouse over-box or interstitial page displaying risks, are being explored by the engines.

Search Happenings

Posted by JC Longbottom, Associate New Business Manager

From the Engines:

·         Publicis acquires Razorfish from Microsoft (pdf); becomes part of the VivaKi family.

·         Google allowing searchers to help improve their future search infrastructure. 

Other Topics of Interest:

·         Facebook to acquire Friendfeed.  Also rolls out new search features- search last 30 days of your feed for status updates, photos, links and videos.

·         Getting paid for promotional tweets.

·         Microsoft increases Bing Cashback refunds to up to 50%.

·         Gartner Hype Cycle for emerging technology.

·         How to evict people on Facebook who are squatting on your brand name.

Some Fun Stuff:

·         Top 10 funniest Google Suggest results.

Influencers on Consumer Web Behavior: Factor #3, The Rise in Smart Phone Usage

Posted by Dan Malachowski, Product Marketing Manager

The Consumer
According to Gartner, iPhone sales are expected to jump 28% in 2009.  iPhone controls 20% of the smart phone market (Gartner, March 2009).  Consumers are increasingly using their phones to shop online.  comScore notes that 23.7% of iPhone users accessed online retail sites in March 2009.  iPhone users are also visiting auction sites (23.6%) and making electronic payments (20.3%):

 

The Advertiser
According to Forrester, US mobile marketing spend in 2009 will be $391 million.  Forrester projects 27% annual growth in U.S. mobile marketing to $1.3 billion in 2014.  Projections on mobile marketing growth vary widely.  For instance, eMarketer is more bullish, predicting that mobile ad spend will hit $3.3 billion by 2013.

This is Part 3 of a 3 part series on factors that are influencing consumer usage of the Web.

Part 1: The Economy
Part 2: The Continued Growth of Social