We are learning about how marketers are becoming successful in their SEM efforts. PPC can no longer stand for “Pay Per Click” — it must stand for “Pay Per Conversation.” Many marketers agree that the current state of the economy is having an impact on their marketing plans. That’s why every dollar and click matters. Every click is a potential customer trying to engage you; will you continue the dialog or have them bounce off your landing page just moments after they arrive? What you want to do is engage and persuade your visitors to keep taking the next click, all the way through the purchase funnel. To achieve that, you must demonstrate the value of your products and services in all your marketing, especially when sales are decreasing. You do that by planning content to improve relevance and test continuously until you have the best conversation. This session is showing us how to identify missed conversations and what you can do to improve them and your PPC ROI.
Introduction by:
Speakers:
Bryan is opening the discussion about conversation marketing versus click or visitor marketing. Most marketers are not budgeting for the tactics that can make the difference such as multi-variant testing.
Why are conversations failing?
1. Lack of Trust. 2. Establishing Relevance. Google uses this concept in presenting their search results. On average, when visitors come to a site 10% bounce off the site right away, 55% bounce in 2 clicks and an additional 15% drop off by the third click. This is way too high and needs to be addressed. Users will click endlessly if they are finding what they are looking for; either content or links. Bryan is relating this concept to the analogy of a “broken scent”. When a dog is tracking something down it sniffs for the next clue. Two thirds of all visitors are bouncing off your site…so how do we rethink this path of conversion?
What do we do?
Optimization needs to be thought of from a goal conversion perspective. Now Brett is going to talk about Google Analytics and the founder of Urchin is going to show us the “lost” opportunities analysis in Google Analytics. Both speakers agree that we should always be testing.
Focus on high traffic areas of your website with the biggest potential for revenue; look at the landing pages, leaky funnels, site overlay, and internal site search pages. How do I know if it’s the site vs. the ad that needs adjustment? Brett is relating website traffic to auto traffic patterns and flow.
Looking at reports in the analytics products can seem intimidating at first…recommendation is just go to the area that makes the most sense first. The first thing we are looking at is traffic ad bounce rate. Bounce rate is defined as those who leave fairly quickly. The first area he is focusing on is the landing page section. How can we increase page views and minimize bounce rate? Once inside Google Analytics, looking at the views tab on the far right, review bounce rate graph and focus on the red indicators. Next is the funnel report. Traffic going down the center achieve the goal. Looking at the exits will focus you on the “leaky funnel”. Look at this with the site overlay feature and some actionable info is very apparent. Internal site search is another way to see what users are looking for. This really shows us ways to test content. Where do they start and where do they end? Do we need to add pages to help or make the path smoother?
How do we know if it’s the ad or the page?
Look at the landing page optimization panel to study a particular page. look at the non paid bounce rate vs. paid bounce rate. Check the “scent”.. is this page delivering? If paid traffic converts more than the site average, chances are the ads are working well. One way to get started in testing is to start small, for example, working towards ‘contact us’ paths.
How Testing Works?
Basic plan is to take the traffic coming into your site and split it down different testing paths. Minor code adjustments are needed to use the Google Optimizer tool. Most marketers need think of what the intent is of the keyword used by the visitor. Someone can use the same keyword but have two different intentions. The keyword might be good and the experience once on the site could be bad. Bryan is showing us how personality types look at web sites very differently.
There are four major categories, methodical, competitive, spontaneous and humanistic. Looking at Overstock.com, 98% of the traffic bounced. For Spontaneous people it worked; Humanistic did not have any content (reviews); Methodicals did not relate and Competitives wanted to use search. They found adding an image that talked to the other personas increased revenue by 70,000 a day. Wow…it would be nice to have a site that has that big of an opportunity.
What can we do to build trust?
Showing service levels agreements around contact forms. Have policies displayed as well. Keeping checkout processes to a minimum (2-4 steps). Bryan is showing us many examples and he is a very fast talker.
Q&A
- Definition of absolute unique visitor - assigned as a cookie created
- Definition of unique visitor - cookie already assigned and identified
- Google Analytics good for eCommerce analysis but Google Optimizer slows down the site - Check your tags
- Recommendations from Brett include testing extreme vs. similar scenarios
- What percentage of your budget should be used for Multi-Variant testing (MVT) - 5-10%
- Do certain personalities use paid vs natural search - Yes but not really