Search Data Can Uncover Incremental Revenue Opportunities for Clients

As a leading global digital marketing agency, we work on reputable brands with sizeable search marketing campaigns and budgets. An area that is exciting for many of us data geeks is the confluence of analytics, usability and optimization. The vast amount of data that our search and digital media teams comb through is frightening if you don’t know how to organize, filter and engineer it to expose learnings.

For many clients, our search efforts have steered us to identify new consumer behavior patterns that were virtually unknown to our clients. Upon discovery and further testing, these new patterns turned into growth areas that drove incremental revenue – something all agencies take pride in and clients appreciate.

Where to investigate for potential business opportunities:

Search Query Data

Search data provides valuable input into how consumers speak to your products and services and can uncover a variety of opportunities to better your consumer experience. First your site architecture and content strategies should support search and digital media and vice versa. By using search query data to inform site content and taxonomy you ensure that consumers identify with the content and have an improved experience.

Razorfish Client Example:

Results: Razorfish used query data as input into site design and informed site content and taxonomy based on query data.

• Overall average conversion rate increased by 25%
• 46% decrease in CPL
• 63% of total leads are driven by new lead gen pages

Search-Focused Content

Check website search logs or referring search query traffic for consumer behaviors and interests and ensure those interests are supported with an optimized experience. If nothing else, this is a good opportunity to build out search-focused content and landing pages to support consumer interest, which will also offer new organic ranking opportunities.

Search queries can also expose consumer product interest that may not be supported or offered by your client. Sometimes the client can react and build out the product offering for a new product category and revenue opportunity.

Razorfish Client Example:

Results: Paid Search data revealed a new product line offering that wasn’t fully supported online. Pages and products were built out to support the interest and resulted in a new revenue line for the Client.

• Product expansions increased the average number of conversions on these product keywords by over 70%.

 Digital vs. Traditional Trends

Review traditional media’s historical trends and categories that are deemed good or poor performance and challenge the results with comparing to digital media’s trends. You may find a negative correlation between the two exposing gaps and opportunities for online success.

Razorfish Client Example:

Results: Paid Search data revealed that offline marketing deemed “low performance markets” were actually high performers through Paid Search. The client is now shifting focus and service in those areas whereby online revenue steadily increased in new markets by over 4% each month.

Search marketing offers rich, insightful data if you set aside time to digest it. Investigate your analytics data to expose improvement areas in your site architecture, improve content expansion to match consumer interest, and potentially create new products for your client’s business.

Be sure to continue the conversation with Lindsay Blankenship on Twitter @lcblankenship.

At Razorfish Search we’re wincing in anticipation of the day Larry Page snuffs out Exact Match, a beautiful bit of engineering that delivers EXACTLY what we paid for. If yesterday’s post on the Google Blog — announcing the new default option of including misspellings and plurals with exact match — is any indication, Google is going to slide into evil with a level of transparency and a sense of history that would make an oil company blush.

The post didn’t mention that Google’s new matching is exactly the same as Yahoo’s unlamented “Match Driver,” a factor in advertisers’ preference for Google back in the days when the two companies competed in search. The post also didn’t mention the likely impetus for this change: a surprising 8% year-over-year CPC decline that put a damper on GOOG’s Q4 earnings call. Seems a few too many Google customers found out you can get more conversions for less money with a smart keyword strategy of multiple-match-type buys of the same keywords. (Razorfish didn’t see the 2011 CPC decline – presumably because our clients have been enjoying these discounts for years.)

Rolling back the glorious precision of exact match is one way to “earn” more per click. If Google were our client, though, we’d point out angering your best customers and being less than straightforward about the decision is a tough way to win Likes and Friends. Oh, right — we mean +1s. Whatever.

A few weeks ago I went to the hair salon to get my hair cut.   As my hair dresser cuts my hair, we begin talking about hobbies, friends, family and…my career.  Once he learns that I’m into “online advertising” (as I put it, to refrain from trying to explain SEM), he immediately talks to me about Twitter (in a very excited and enthusiastic manner).  For the next half hour, our conversation consists of him telling me – “Follow me on twitter!” “We should be friends!” “Can you tweet that you’re at Salon XYZ?” and “Oh yeah, don’t forget… follow me on Twitter!”  Whoa, what did I get myself into?   After I left the salon, of course I followed him on Twitter. (Hang in there, there’s a reason for this anecdote.)

A few weeks later, I read this article on Search Engine Land, and it made me think about the conversation my hairdresser and I had.  Social media has grown to become a viable tool for many small businesses.  Social  media helps businesses to create brand awareness and build brand relationships with their customers or potential customers.  My hairdresser insisted that I follow him on Twitter so that he could develop a relationship with me, by sending tweets for upcoming salon events – and also in the hopes that I would recommend his salon to my friends.

A recent report from Borrell Associates predicts that small businesses will focus more dollars on social media advertising and other promotional spending (i.e. email marketing) over paid search advertising.

Come again?  Yes, that’s right – the new study shows that social media advertising spend will surpass paid search advertising spend by 2012.   According to the study about 45 – 70% of small businesses are already using social media as a medium.   In late November, a survey from MerchantCircle discovered that 70% of small businesses use Facebook to promote their business.  The chart below illustrates the percentage of businesses that used different social platforms for their businesses in 2011.

In 2011, social media spend was just behind paid search for small businesses.  The Borrell report estimated that approximately $6.2 billion was spent on social media advertising in 2011 (overall small and large businesses) – 65% of those dollars was spent on Facebook advertising.   Small businesses accounted for $1.14 billion of social media spend.

The Borrell report goes into further detail on how small businesses measure success.   57% of small businesses said “new customers” was a key metric in measuring success, followed by “additional fans, friends, followers,” “increased visits to business social network pages”, etc.

With the ever evolving search landscape – and Google’s recent rollout of Search, plus Your World, it makes sense how social media is becoming so important to businesses as a whole.  It is becoming imperative that businesses (both small and large) begin to think about their social media strategies and the integration of social media and paid search marketing in their business initiatives.  Now that users have the ability to choose between more personalized search results rather than standard web results, it is important that businesses have a presence in social communities.

Where does your business or brand stand in social media adoption? … And speaking of social media adoption, remember to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook!

Super Bowl XLVI taught us three things:

1. You can’t spell Elite without Eli.
2. Madonna is still too stubborn to age.
3. There is a clear divide between brands that have embraced the digital age and those that have chosen to ignore it.

Aside from the game, the most interesting part of the Super Bowl has always been the ads. Everybody has an opinion and a favorite commercial, whether they’re Mad Men or not. Some popular ads include Apple’s 1984 Macintosh ad, the Budweiser frogs, and of course the McDonald’s H-O-R-S-E commercial, starring Michael Jordan and Larry Bird. However clever and memorable these ads may have been, the days have passed when consumers were loyal to a brand simply because of their clever TV commercials. With information traveling at a million miles per tweet, consumers can easily go online to engage in a digital experience that determines whether they become loyal customers or whether they pass on a product, without ever having to leave the comfort of their living rooms. Today, brands are forced to connect with consumers through the digital channel in order to maintain these valued relationships.

Now that we’re in the digital age, this year’s Super Bowl was the perfect venue for brands to flex their digital muscles to connect with a wider audience. During this year’s game, I analyzed all 93 commercials that aired from the scheduled start of the Super Bowl until the MVP was announced, and I was on the lookout for the following criteria:

1. Did the brand encourage the audience to visit their Facebook page?
2. Did the brand give a Twitter handle (#….)?
3. Did the brand encourage the audience to visit their Google+ page?
4. Did the brand encourage the audience to visit their brand website?
5. Did the brand encourage the audience to download their mobile app?

Facebook

Roughly 15% of the commercials attempted to direct users to their Facebook pages. Bud Light was the winner in this category, airing four commercials that referenced their Facebook page.

Twitter

Bud Light, again, took this category, with all four of its commercials displaying a Twitter hashtag. GE was a close second with three ads. Audi gets credit for airing a clever commercial centered on the recent vampire craze, and then displaying the Twitter hashtag #SoLongVampires at the end.

Google+

Google+ still doesn’t seem to be gaining much traction as no commercials attempted to redirect the audience to their Google+ pages.

Brand Website

Of all the ads, 70% featured the brand’s website, while the other 30% opted out. Among that 30%, 60% of brands opted out of mentioning Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and mobile apps. Coke and Lexus were among the 60% that chose not to redirect the audience to their online experience. Considering their competitors, Pepsi and Audi, were among those that heavily participated in digital messaging, it will be interesting to see how long it takes the former brands to catch on.

Mobile

Of the 93 commercials, roughly 20% encouraged users to download a mobile or tablet app. Bud Light, Pepsi, and Toyota took it a step further and featured a Shazam icon at the bottom right hand of their commercials, which allowed the audience to tag the audio coming from the commercials. Links were then provided for deeper online content for each brand. Toyota users were redirected to the “Camry Effect” page where they got a chance to win two Camrys, one for the sweepstakes winner and one for a friend.

Prior to the start of the game, 25% of all Super Bowl related searches were performed on a mobile device, according to Google. However, during the game, 40% of all Super Bowl related searches were done on a mobile device. This year’s Super Bowl featured several different marketing strategies, but it is clear that mobile and digital should become an integral portion of a brand’s portfolio.

The clear winner this year for digital messaging was Bud Light. It was the only brand to feature a Facebook callout and a Twitter callout, and their ads also gave the option to download both mobile and tablet apps. Godaddy.com gets honorable mention for advertising two different domain names, and for featuring a QBR code in one of their ads that redirected the audience to their website.

24% of brands included a reference to their digital efforts during the Super Bowl, which signifies a change in consciousness. Unfortunately, most brands still found it sufficient to only display their brand’s website at the conclusion of their commercials. As audience engagement with social networks continues to grow, these powerful brands will have to embrace the inclusion of digital in their television campaigns, rather than ignoring it, or else risk losing the loyal customers that made them what they are.

Based on the above analysis, we’d be remiss if we didn’t also take the opportunity to promote our own digital extension. With that in mind, please join the conversation on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook!

I imagine over 90% of people reading this post has run into a tagging headache. The process to get tags created, approved, in the project pipeline, into production, and live on a client site can take weeks (sometimes months) to deploy. Oftentimes the tags incorrectly fire and need to be adjusted, which delays a campaign launch even further. It’s time to break down these walls and make tag management easier.

Whatever glitches people may have faced along the way, the consensus is that tag management has historically been a painful process for clients and agencies… until now. Technology is here to change the way we manage tags. Tag Management Systems (TMS) are becoming a hot commodity in the digital industry and soon everyone will be using them. They benefit all parties as they reduce the lengthy hours spent managing tags on the client’s side. Thus, agencies get their tags loaded faster, new campaigns launch faster, and access to richer data through tagging sophistication is expedited.

Basic Features a TMS should offer:

• Time savings (time is money)
• Reduction of page load time (or no change)
• More control over vendor tags
• Tag scheduling (launch or pause on desired date)
• Ability to fire vendor tags on flash events without modifying the flash source code
• Multi-platform capabilities (Omniture, Google Analytics, Coremetrics, WebTrends)
• Permissions and roles for different user types
• Pre-deployment testing through QA process workflow

In general, with a TMS you should have a newfound freedom from the typical arduousness of the tagging process. Technology adds a layer of ease and control that should enhance the accuracy of your analytics and drive more sophisticated media placements, thereby improving performance.

Advanced functionality some TMS’s offer:

• Site visualization overlay tools – enables efficient crowdsourcing of tagging events and object; also has UX benefits
• Elimination of need to write Javascript (time savings)
• Page event tracking – provides deeper media tagging for richer analytics insights and targeting
• Leads to sophisticated and advanced media targeting and retargeting capabilities
• Conditional rules based tag firing
• Mobile phone call tracking and device retargeting

As digital marketers, we thrive on tags to track behaviors and inform our digital programs. Web Analytics is crucial to evolve and scale digital success. Flexibility and nimbleness in adding tracking codes to a site without disturbing the site’s functionality and speed allows our media programs the ability to move quickly and adapt to change.

Employing the right TMS solution can reclaim 95% of your hours back from tag management tasks to focus on more important tasks like analysis and growing your business. When Google Analytics Premium was announced in 2011, many companies were excited. Many of those companies, however, were paralyzed by the thought of re-tagging their websites, which deterred any forward-moving progress to test Google Analytics Premium, or transitioning to any new analytics platform, for that matter.

Tag Management Systems make that nightmare go away by doing the heavy lifting through a simplified tagging process. If you aren’t currently thinking about Tag Management in your office, you should be.

Where should you start? Tag Management Providers:

• BrightTag
• Ensighten
• Satelllite
• TagMan

I wish I could say told you so… Oh wait, I just did. First things first… the Internet is growing… at least in terms of traffic. However, we already know that! Last April I wrote a POV on the rise of the tablet devices and a follow-up is in order. In the world of search advertising, mobile phones and tablets continue to outpace the performance of search ads on PCs, while representing only a fraction of impressions and investment, according to Marin Software.

Lots of factors are affecting this, such as the continued upgrades that telephone service providers are providing, the cost of mobile and tablet devices are going down, and the growth of mobile and tablet internet impressions and clicks. Phones and tablet devices are allowing users to do more than ever online… while on the go. According to eMarketer, tablets shipped out have nearly tripled from 2010, which confirms the usage of these devices is rising fast.

Remember, the average consumer is using multiple devices during the purchase funnel when deciding on a product or service. This division will increase and our job, as a search marketer, is to ensure that the consumer has a good experience on all devices. Also, our job will best serve client’s interests by focusing on three fronts:

1. Tablet-friendly sites: With greater usage of tablet devices, brands will have to maintain a user-friendly presence across all devices. Tablet conversion could ultimately double or triple if optimized correctly.
2. Attribution: A purchase that begins with a tablet device often ends on the desktop or at the store (depending on vertical). As search marketers, we need to keep this in mind and allocate search budgets across devices appropriately after accounting for attribution.
3. Tailor Search Campaigns: Search marketers should aim to reach the consumer across devices in a manner consistent with how these devices are used. Remember, the medium is the message.

If you want to shoot me a line, a question or send cupcakes, you can direct all these inquiries to Rebecca.Keen@razorfish.com.

Razorfish is pleased to announce fellow ‘fish Lindsay Blankenship has been accepted to SEMPO’s 2012 – 2014 Board of Directors. Lindsay was one of thirteen Board seats selected from thirty-seven extremely qualified candidates.

“I would like to thank all our nominees for their commitment and willingness to serve the organization” said, SEMPO Chairman Jeff Pruitt. “We are impressed by the enthusiasm you have for SEMPO – and we urge you all to stay engaged within the organization. We have lots to accomplish and we cannot succeed without you.”

The Chairman also said the organization received an impressive number of votes across all 37 candidates, representing the commitment of the members to the organization.

The following new Board of Directors will take office on March 22:

• Lindsay Blankenship – Director, Search Marketing Razorfish
• Chris Boggs – Director Search Media and Thought Leadership Rosetta
• Bruce Clay – President Bruce Clay, Inc.
• Mike Corak – EVP, Strategy ethology
• Rob Garner – Vice President, Strategy iCrossing
• Mike Grehan – Global VP, Content incisivemedia
• Michael Gullaksen – SVP, Managing Director Covario
• Brian Kaminski – COO iProspect
• Frank Lee – Head of Sales DataPop
• Ian Lurie – CEO Portent, Inc.
• Kristjan Mar Hauksson – Founder/Director Nordic e-Marketing
• John Nicoletti – Director, Agency Development Google, Inc.
• Michael Xu – SVP Beijing Gridsum Technology

Feel free to follow Lindsay on Twitter at @lcblankenship.

Digital marketing agency Razorfish and Starwood Hotels & Resorts began running hyperlocal Google mobile search ads in November 2009.

“We slowly began dipping our toe in the mobile space simply because it’s sometimes difficult to track performance as we do with desktop campaigns.” says Michelle Ogle, Digital Marketing and Affiliate Strategy Manager for Starwood Hotels & Resorts. “However, with our mobile search ad campaigns, we gained precise insight into the number and duration of calls to each brand.”

Working together, the Starwood Hotels & Resorts and the Razorfish team launched search ads with click-to-call (CTC) and location extensions, providing potential guests easy access to location-specific, clickable phone numbers to book their stay and map information to access directions to the hotel location. “Implementing click-to-call and location extensions simultaneously boosted ROI and improved user experience,” says Amos Ductan, Senior Search Manager at Razorfish. “Mobile users are 20 times more likely to click on a map than desktop users and people who make a call are much more likely to convert. Ad extensions improved both conversions and customer experience.”

Case Study Results

The combination of click-to-call and location ad extensions resulted in an increase in mobile paid search ROI, with CTC now driving a majority of Starwood hotel’s mobile search bookings. Additionally, Starwood hotel’s hyperlocal mobile search campaign resulted in:

• 20x increase in mobile paid search ROI
• Mobile booking growth of 20% month over month
• 200% increase in mobile traffic

Looking Forward

With the tremendous success of their mobile paid search campaigns, Starwood Hotels & Resorts and Razorfish are looking for innovative ways to engage with potential guests on mobile by making use of engaging ad formats such as video and other rich media. “With the effectiveness of the mobile platform validated, we plan to continue exploring all the ways mobile and Google can improve upon our customer experience through cutting-edge executions such as rich media,” explains Ogle. “We’re pleased with our results and are excited to continue to see the growth of travel planning and booking through mobile.”

Read more about the Starwood Case Study on the Google Mobile Blog or download the full case study.

There are so many Google product releases and industry news bulletins about their implications, it’s easy to miss a big one. We’re calling attention to www.focusontheuser.org, a project designed by interested Google-watchers, to highlight a monumental decision by the search giant: to overrule its ranking algorithm in promoting Google+.

The product in question – “Search Plus Your World” – was marketed as simple elevation of relevant social links in search results. The people behind focusontheuser built a widget to demonstrate that, actually, the new product cherry-picks Google’s own social results from Google’s index, no matter what the holy algorithm has deemed most relevant to the user’s query. It does indeed look very much like “Search Plus Your World” lifts Google+ results above Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn results that Google’s search algorithm correctly ranked higher.

This flies in the face of Google’s culture, core to which is the belief that optimal engineering is the optimal business plan. No wonder the decision is causing a wave of disgust in the developer community. It’s fascinating that Google has released no statement defending the decision (we requested a comment and waited 48 hours before publishing this post). Google resisted the business case for advancing its own properties via search throughout Eric Schmidt’s 10-year tenure as CEO. It seems co-founder Larry Page feels differently now that he’s the one reporting quarterly earnings. The fact that Google’s communications department doesn’t have its story straight yet suggests this huge decision wasn’t even thought through.

As newspaper circulation continues to decline, so does the reach of printed ad circulars/free standing inserts, which are important drivers of both brick and mortar and ecommerce sales. Along with challenges of decreased reach, retailers are also finding that the promotional lift of circulars is declining. According to research conducted by Nielsen, printed circulars are less effective than they were 6 years ago. In 2010, the average ROI boost of printed circulars was 20% compared to 28% in 2005. Retailers are faced with the challenge of maintaining and/or expanding the reach and efficiency of circulars in a declining print market.

In many ways, the internet has replaced the Sunday paper. According to an Audience Insight Survey released in December 2011 from interclick, two thirds of Americans are learning about in-store deals online. In addition, 42% of consumers prefer online advertising to newspapers and other sources, and those consumers who see in-store deals online are more likely to visit a brick and mortar store. This is especially true for electronics, grocery, drug, department, and clothing retailers.  Many retailers have made circulars available on their websites; however the associated user experience of these is fairly poor and very few can be viewed on tablet or mobile devices.

Google has acknowledged this challenge and recently launched a new product that offers an interactive and personalized circular experience aptly named Google Circulars. This product was launched in October 2011 with a small alpha test of US retailers including Macy’s, Best Buy, Home Depot and others. The success of the alpha has led Google to move this product into a beta release launching in Q1 2012 with an expanded set of retailers and vendors.

Google has always had an emphasized focus on the retail industry, and many of the beta opportunities they have rolled out over the past few years have been designed specifically for retail partners. They have increasingly understood the challenges retailers face in utilizing online channels to drive in store purchase. With Google Circulars, they are hoping to further bridge this gap by offering a more robust and user friendly digital circular solution.

Google Circulars presents an exciting new opportunity to utilize digital circulars in a highly customized and targeted way. The breadth of data that Google has access to use in serving personalized circulars is unprecedented and this new ad format has shown early success. As with any new marketing opportunities, there are risks involved in being an early adopter. The lack of proven success, as well as the potential resources required to run such a program, are very real barriers. In addition, the monthly minimum media spend would result in incremental cost or reduced spend in existing tactics. Success of this initiative is ultimately dependent on consumer adoption and engagement. While it’s too early to say whether or not Google Circulars will be a success, this product offering does attempt to fill a growing need of offer communication between retailers and consumers.

To read the full Razorfish Health POV on Google Circulars, click here.