Author Archives: Alex Porter

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The Shift from Relevant to Useful

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Relevant and useful. These terms are often used interchangeably in search marketing, but they are very different. A great Search Insider post by Gord Hotchkiss outlined this idea within the context of how recent Google updates will affect SEO practices:

“First of all, from the perspective of the user, Google’s changes mark an evolution of search beyond a tool used to search for information to one used by us to do the things we want to do. It’s moving from using relevance as the sole measure of success to incorporating usefulness.”

Useful is a step beyond relevant.

The other weekend I was building a trellis in the backyard with my two and five year old sons running around (bear with me here). I banged a nail the wrong way and needed a hammer to get it out. If I asked the two year old to grab me a hammer from the nearby tool pile, he might have returned with a claw-less ball peen. His response to my need would be relevant to our conversation, but completely useless for what I was trying to accomplish. He can only respond with a literal interpretation of my query (also, he may have also poked his eye out). However, the older son can take the next cognitive leap. He understands the context of my need based on past behavior. He’s seen me remove nails and remembers that I need the hammer with the “clawy-thing”. As he searches the nearby tools he discards the many items that fit with his indexed concept of what a hammer is and returns with the one tool I actually need.

Google Instant, search history personalization and Search Plus Your World are all Google’s attempts at being as smart as my five year old. They move search engines beyond a reference index to providing specific solutions, often before we even know what we’re looking for.

In the 2010 blog post announcing Google Instant, the company demonstrated that it understood people don’t want search-as-you-type functionality, but rather search-before-you-type predictions. Meaning Google attempts to know what you want before you do. Isn’t that the mark of excellent customer service in any industry? The hotel clerk who sees you are there for a conference provides directions to the venue without asking. The waiter who brings the dessert menu just when your business conversation runs dry. The river rafting guide who puts beer in the bus for the ride back. These people are useful, not just relevant.

The personalized search results introduced with Search Plus Your World this year provide another step from relevant to useful. The backlash to Search Plus Your World feels so familiar to the conversations we all had in 2005 when search history personalization for signed-in Google users appeared. Many people were concerned then with the “filter bubble” only showing us a narrow view of the world. Today, Search Engine Watch reports an Ask Your Target Market Google Search survey asked “Should Google’s search results be personalized based on past searches and information from social networking sites?” Forty-five percent of respondents to said no, compared to 15.5 percent who said yes.

This is the same debate we saw in 2005, and then in 2009 when search history personalization became standard even if you weren’t signed in. More useful results must be results with greater filters. Privacy issues aside, these changes are just using technology to replicate our own thought processes. We all create our own “filter bubbles” subconsciously every day. Our brains train themselves to restrict the sensory input we receive to limit our processing to the most important information. If you asked me what color the vase next to our office’s elevator was, I couldn’t tell you, despite the fact I walk by it every day. It’s not relevant or useful, so my brain doesn’t register it. Ask me how many inches are left in the nice whiskey I bought for my office? 3.5 and going fast. Our new reality is that a tool is allowing these same functions to occur in search.

Our connections to other people also mark the difference between relevant and useful. Is your old friend’s photo of your Senior Trip to Gettysburg what you’re looking for when trying to remember details of American history? No. But they’re more relevant than a stranger’s trip photos and you might take a minute to show your wife your ill-advised attempts at facial hair in high school and make her laugh. That’s always useful.

So what does the shift towards usefulness mean for digital marketers? It’s no longer enough to be the most relevant- you must also be the most useful. Careful placement of keywords and other traditional SEO tactics help signal relevance to search engine’s crawlers. Engagement and sharing of a site or piece of content signals usefulness. This means you have to put in the work, creating content people actually find useful.

So fetch me my hammer!

No not that one…

Report Shows Lifetime Value of PPC Customer Much Higher Than Previously Thought

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We’ve always known new customers are valuable. We’ve always known online search advertising is a cost-effective way to target consumers already looking for goods and services.

But a new report tells us we may have completely underestimated the long-term value of customers gained through Google advertising. Already showing some great initiative, new associate Justin Schroder shared this research with our team.

The report is titled “Measuring the Lifetime Value of Customers Acquired from Google Search Advertising” by Tat Chan, PhD, an associate professor of marketing at Olin Business School.

Dr. Chan and his research partners merged three data sources to estimate the customer lifetime value (these data sources are available to advertisers in different industries). They constructed an individual customer-level panel that tracks data from online browsing history along with on and offline purchases.

This model is a lot more in-depth than industry-standard ROI measures. Current methods typically only measure online transactions, ignoring offline purchases and the long-term profit impact of new customers, as well as multi-channel integration.

The research showed that according to conventional tracking a company incurs a loss of $48 on average to acquire a new customer. After accounting for sales spillovers across channels and the long-term effect, the estimated value of customer acquisition is as high as $950 per customer. This is a huge difference, and has a major impact on how digital marketers and their clients should look at their advertising budgets. 

Lifetime customer value can sometimes be overlooked in the search marketing world of cost per click optimization and immediate return on investment reporting. While our targeting and technology allow us to see very granular data, it sometimes takes research like this for us to step back and see the bigger picture of the path to purchase.

 

 

 

A Man and his Rifle: A Marketing Story

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Photo Credit: Leann McGlasson

Have you ever watched a sport on TV and thought, “Hey I could do that?” And I mean realistically compete at a high level. I know I’m never beating Michael Phelps in the 100m, but I have visions of grandeur for other athletic feats of prowess.

Last Winter Olympics I became fascinated with the Winter Biathalon. In the event contestants cross country ski and then shoot at targets. Miss a target, get penalized. First one across the line wins gold.

I’ve cross country skied a few times and shot a rifle once when I was 12 or so. So immediately I’m thinking, “Hey I can do this!”

I’m somewhat of an optimist.

About a month ago I told myself that the Senior Olympics are 25 to 30 years away, why not start training and see what happens?

My first mission – buy a rifle. This is where the marketing story starts. At Location3 we are always talking about the path to purchase and all the steps that occur along the way.

So I started where most modern quests for information begin:  Google. I searched for what type of rifle is used in biathalons. Just a regular .22 LR. Ok, great. Now I know what I need.

The biathalon professional rifles run about $3,000. This is a steep investment for a beginner. I found a couple of pretty sweet rifles and decided the H&K Rimfire was my favorite.

However the video for the H&K made my wife a little mad.

Now what? I asked around to a few buddies and they weren’t much help.

Back to Google, just searching for .22 LR rifle. I found a ton of .22 rifles but I didn’t know anything about them. I needed to talk to an expert.

I Googled “local gun shop 80210″. Not very good results. Pawn shops and a few absurd websites.

I start to think, “Where have I seen guns in a store recently?”

Aha! When I bought my Secret Santa a soccer ball there was a gun corner at the Big 5 Sporting Goods just down the street.

I stopped in for a chat with the gun guy and he walked me through a few different models and types, along with the pros and cons of each choice.

I thanked him for his time and left with a scratch pad of notes.

Back to Google. Now I’m searching brand names, reading reviews, and looking at pictures. I also saw one personalized result, which was great because now I had a friend to consult (and a cool picture to boot!).

I settled on the Ruger .22 LR Carbine Autoloading Rifle in Black/Stainless Steel. I went back to Big 5 Sporting Goods on Colorado Blvd., purchased the gun and shot it with some friends.

Later that night I get an email from one of those friends telling me buy this extra magazine from Cabela’s. But instead I called the shooting range. They carried it and yes, Friday’s are pretty light at the range.

So tomorrow I’ll be buying my accessories at the range and shooting some more! Will I win Gold in the Senior Olympics? Who knows…but I have a sweet rifle, and a new hobby.

So what does all of this mean? Well the path to purchase is certainly not linear and it involves many of moving parts. Why does anyone buy anything? Every purchase and every decision is unique. As marketers we attempt to identify signals and intents of purchase and provide the consumer the right information at the right time. During this process there were multiple opportunities for marketers to grab my attention and have me buy from them, or buy more from them.

If this was a digital marketing campaign my visits and clicks would be seen as zero ROI. Ruger certainly has no idea why I bought this rifle at Big 5 and Big 5 has no idea why I was in there in the first place.

Discovering these paths to purchase is a tricky business. It requires the abilities of creative folks with excellent analytical skills to make sense of it all, and create campaigns that produce results.

Keep your eye on the target, keep practicing, get feedback, adjust, and do it again.

One day the gold medal may just be in your grasp.

 

Key Takeaways from IFA 2012

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There are a few really important points I need to share coming out of IFA 2012:

Seriously though, IFA continues to be a really important event for us to get face-to-face with both franchise corporate officers and individual franchise owners. Each year we learn more about what challenges they face and how we can provide better solutions, along with new industry trends. A few thoughts in sum:

There is a lot of excitement around digital media, but the general mindset is still focused on basic analytics and search. There is an increasing awareness of the importance of maps, mobile and localized solutions. Hot topics included Google+ business pages and increased use of video. Franchise owners are also becoming more aware of the benefits of using a single digital marketing partner instead of having an SEO firm, a PPC firm, a video production partner, etc., however adoption of all media channels as part of an integrated campaign remains slow.

The franchise space is very interested in social media, but in a way like a shy middle school boy is interested in girls. They think they like it, but are afraid to go near it, and if they do go near it, its very awkward. I’d say based on my conversations, 20 percent of franchise owners are are excited and ready to go with social media, 60 percent are unsure but interested, and 20 percent won’t touch it.

We saw that there are two ways corporate officers tend to deal with managing social media across hundreds or thousands of locations. The first method is to just let things play out and trust the franchise owners to post or engage however they choose without centralized strategies or regulations. The second method is to seize control at a corporate level and not encourage owners to get involved in any form of social pages or local content engagement. Neither of these methods are optimal. Giving thousands of people free reign to post without a strategy or framework dilutes the brand and can lead to errors in individual judgement. On the other hand, having a strict corporate line with little or no localization doesn’t take advantage of the amazing opportunities for customer engagement social media provides. By using syndication and tracking tools such as Facebook’s Parent-Child option and MomentFeed, it’s possible to have the best of both worlds: localized social media content that conforms to brand values.

One thing we heard loud and clear from individual franchise owners was a sense of relief from just attending the show and learning that other owners face the same problems they do. Franchise and multi-unit businesses have unique challenges and a big part of gathering together at a conference like IFA is to share what works, what doesn’t and what’s coming in the future of this growing space.

Also, it was a good opportunity to work on my golf swing:

 

#DigitalTebowing: The Results Are In

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Location3 Media’s digital Tebowing campaign started as a fun ride-a-meme idea but turned into both a valuable lesson and a business lead. An in-depth discussion of the techniques, optimizations and take-aways is still to come, but in the meantime check out the top-level results:

Location3 ran a Google Display Network campaign so that both display and text ads would show on tebowing.com for game days and the days following. This campaign resulted in 13,432 impressions and 11 clicks. There was also an official conversion: a download of our analytics white paper. All of this was achieved with a pay per click budget of less than $20.

 

Tebowing

Location3 Tebowing Display Ad

The campaign began with targeting just the Colorado demographic but it was then expanded nationwide. As you can see below Colorado drove the most qualified traffic. The addition of tablet targeting resulted in three more visits.

The Tebowing campaign included a $200 spend on Promoted Tweets from Jan. 8-10 on two separate campaigns. This generated 13,723 impressions and 233 clicks. An additional Promoted Tweet ran the next week when the Broncos advanced in the playoffs and this generated 8,734 impressions and 200 clicks. Google Analytics data from Promoted Tweetstracking shows that 97.7 percent of the visitors from the tweets were new to Location3.

Stay tuned for more display tips learned from this initiative and in the mean time, remember:

“Success comes in a lot of ways, but it doesn’t come with money and it doesn’t come with fame. It comes from having a meaning in your life, doing what you love and being passionate about what you do. That’s having a life of success.” – Tim Tebow

Tebowing

Tebowing display ad on tebowing.com

“Search Plus Your World” Shifts Strategies

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Welcome to your world, personalized. Google search results have changed once again, this time to serve content that has been shared with you privately along with matches from the “general” web. Search Plus Your World is now live but is only shown to those logged in to Google.com. For an in-depth look at the functionality, check out searchengineland.com.

This sea change will have many deep reaching effects on search marketing. Let’s take a look at some early predictions:

Social Impact

This could be a fantastic way for brands to increase awareness. Google accesses individual’s information from Google+, so searchers will be shown results based on their contacts. Say I search for pizza in Denver. I could be shown a picture a Google+ friend posted of The Walnut Room’s Mean Green Pizza, decide it looks delicious and order from there. This result wouldn’t have previously ranked because it may not have had the weight without the personalization.

This is another reason brands need to be using Google+, regardless of whether a large percent of their current demographic is on the site. If Google is making it a priority, so should brands.

Of course, this opens up a flood of issues around privacy. Users should be warned something shared as private could be shared publicly by others. This has already been an issue in Google+, despite the fact the site warns you a piece of content was shared in a limited capacity before you try to share it with someone else.

Google+ profiles are also showing in search results, similar to direct connect for pages. This is important for entrepreneurs or those who are their own brand. Begin to type a name into the search bar and people you are connected to through Google+ will automatically populate.

People and Pages suggestions from Google+ will also start showing on the right side of the search results, when Google deems them relevant. The company has not revealed how this is determined but if you wish to take advantage of it, placing relevant keywords in your Google+ profile is a good place to start.

Image from searchengineland.com

The content displayed with Search Plus Your World only shows information from Google+, not Facebook or Twitter. Google claims it’s because these sites don’t allow it, which has sparked a bit of a cat fight.

An additional downside is that Search Plus Your World may not work as intended for individuals with multiple Google accounts. However, this is probably only an issue for those of us in the industry (or tricky online daters with multiple email accounts).

Paid Search Impact

On the paid search side, there appears to be no immediate impact from this change. The only exception is if the  “+1” social extension is enabled your ad may stand out more if people are looking for personalized results. This can impact click through rates and quality score, and may result in higher positions at the same cost per click. Advertisers should definitely add the social extension in AdWords and continue to or begin being active on their Google+ business page.

Google tells us the launch of Search Plus Your World will not impact the way ads are shown for searches because the ads are targeted based on the query, not the content of the search results page. However, they confirmed ads with a high number of +1 recommendations have the potential to perform better.

SEO Impact

From an organic search perspective, this will obviously have a huge impact because the new program is listing G+ results at the top of the search results.

Brands should make sure the content posted on their Google+ pages are well optimized for their key search phrases. This will give them a better chance of showing up in the search results. It should also be a huge carrot for brands to share more (SEO-optimized) content through their Google+ network.

Building this network is also a worthwhile strategy. If your account doesn’t have much of a following, actively seek out people in your industry who do. Find some early adopters or influencers and develop a relationship for content syndication. It seems very likely the more people that share and +1 your content, the better positioning you will see in the search engine results.

These are all early predictions and only time and use will tell how Search Plus Your World will really impact digital marketing. This is by no means the first change towards personalization in Google’s search results (geo-targeting and primary language selection are nothing new) but there is no doubt this is a major step towards the merging of social and search.  Obviously Google including personalized results from other major social networks like Facebook and Twitter would be another big game changer. Check back as we post updates on changes and shifting strategies.

Tebowing: Location3 Media Takes a Knee #digitaltebow

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Tebowing:(vb) to get down on a knee and start praying, even if everyone else around you is doing something completely different.

We’ve seen a rash of this behavior around the office since the beginning of young Tim Tebow’s tenure with the Denver Broncos. People are split between loving to love and loving to hate Tebow, but whether you’re a supporter or a hater, “Tebowing” has become a popular meme across the internet. Being fans of both the Broncos and digital marketing, we decided to make this an example of a cross-channel campaign and explain the tactics we used to take you from the Tebowing ad to this page:

Starting with Google DoubleClick Ad Planner, we ensured Tewbowing.com was included in the Google Display Network and that our Google ads could be placed on this specific website. According to DoubleClick, the majority of visitors to this site are 35-44 years old and have a college education. In other words, people who are in Location3 Media’s target market. For another campaign we could add demographics or elaborate on placement targeting options, but since this was just one site placement we did not include audience targeting

We also used Google Insights to research when traffic for the term “Tebowing” peaked and dipped. For example, traffic increased during Broncos games (especially when they won) and the week a group of student athletes were suspended for “Tebowing” in school hallways. It also increased when Detroit Lion Stephen Tulloch struck the pose after sacking Tebow in the 45-10 loss to the Lions in October (right after Tebowing went worldwide).Traffic dipped on weeks the Broncos suffered losses. Based on this information, we placed ads on Tebowing.com during games as well as following winning games. The campaign can be optimized to take advantage of this traffic data and help allocate the display budget.

Google AdWords tools also allow you to pair ads in the Google display network to a specific domain. In this case, www.tebowing.com was an obvious match.

While we have the capability to geographically target at a very specific level, we chose to target just the state of Colorado for this campaign. The strategy is more about placement targeting, as www.tebowing.com is such a natural fit.

Time and day parting for ad display was set to begin at kickoff on Sunday, January 1st and run until Tuesday, January 3rd. If the Broncos make the playoffs we’ll do it again the next weekend.

If you’d like to learn more about our Tebowing Master Plan, tweet out this blog with #digitaltebow and we will get back to you ASAP!

UPDATE ON JANUARY 12:

We launched a Promoted Tweets campaign on Sunday, January 8 at 2:00 p.m. to run through Tuesday, January 10 at 11:59 p.m. From this campaign, we received 13,723 impressions, 233 clicks and had a 1.72% engagement rate. The majority of impressions (56.66%) occurred on Sunday during and immediately after the game. We are running the Promoted Tweets campaign again for the game this weekend. Check back on Tuesday for updated stats.

UPDATE ON JANUARY 26:

The results from our #DigitalTebowing campaign are in! For a full synopsis, visit: http://www.location3.com/digitaltebowing-the-results-are-in/

Maximizing Display Advertising with Attribution

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I’ve always thought one of the best things about paid search advertising is how precisely an analyst can track its success.

Display advertising has proven to be a little trickier to quantify, just like traditional television and print ads. View-through rates tell an advertiser how many people saw their banner ad on a page, but how can they tell if seeing the ad contributed to a later conversion?

Attribution analysis is our best bet for finding an accurate answer to that question.

Attribution is the process of evaluating all the media channels potential customers use to convert. The goal is to give accurate credit to all the different media channels that contribute to a conversion, instead of just the last click.

Approximately  two years ago Location3 Media proposed to a long-term national client that tracking online searcher’s overall path to conversion would help quantify the value of display advertising and give insight into overall budget optimization. I’m happy to say we weren’t wrong.

Problem:

Because of the reasons mentioned above, the main problem facing budget optimization was accurate analysis of how display campaigns affected conversions. It is possible to track the “view-through” rate fairly accurately, but this only tells us how many people saw the banner ad. Tying that exposure to impact on actual conversions is more complex.  It also doesn’t tell us which banner ads in a creative series are more appealing and drive more conversions than others.

Solutions:

Location3 used a third-party ad server to tag each display ad with a unique tracking URL. This strategy allows us to capture both view-through and click-through data. If all campaigns are tracked under a third-party server, data can be gathered on display, paid search and social media banner campaigns. This data in aggregate creates a picture of a the consumer’s path.

For example, the data may show that 12 percent of users had the conversion path:

Display >> Display >> Social Banner >> Paid Search >> Convert.

Or that 3 percent of users had a path like this:

Social Banner >> Display >> Display >> Paid Search >> Display >> Display >> Paid Search >> Convert

The next step from path analysis is applying attribution models. Attribution models weigh the value of each channel and illuminate which channels are performing best. If an analyst was only looking at the last click of the  paths to conversion above, they would assign a very high value to paid search. It’s accurate to say paid search played a large role in the conversion, but it was not the exclusive driver. Examining the entire path shows significant value in display advertising.

Outcomes:

By tracking each display ad with third-party ad servers we were able to identify which ads were the top performers. This allows us to make informed recommendations for future ads. For example, the smaller ads featuring people outperform larger ads featuring landscapes.

This form of tracking  empirically proves that paid and organic search successes are bolstered by display, showing investment in display improves overall performance across channels. Finally, integrating the campaign at this level allows us to really optimize the budget. As a paid search campaign is refined the cost per lead decreases and that extra money can then be funneled into boosting display without increasing total budget.

The client was thrilled to see this level of analysis and optimization, and we were pretty stoked to see our recommendations perform in action!

Thor, God of Thunder’s Take on Integrated Campaigns

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Yes, that’s me as Thor, along with my beautiful wife and children. No, this blog is not a shameful excuse to exploit them. I want to tell you about a Halloween epiphany I had last night.

The sun was setting behind the Rockies as we went house to house. It was Spiderman’s first trick or treating and he was amazed that people just kept passing out candy because he asked. We choose to wear coordinating costumes because we’re a family and we’re in this crime fighting business together. However, I started to notice an unintended consequence of our coordination as the night went on: our kids seemed to be getting more candy than the others.

I searched beyond my natural bias to assume it was because they are the coolest kids in the universe. As someone used to testing variables for marketing studies, I decided to send the kids up to the door on their own while we watched from the sidewalk with the other parents. They came back with a single piece each, a departure from the solid handfuls I saw when we went to the door as a family. I wanted to run further trials but Captain America gets really grouchy past his bedtime.

Once we were home I kept thinking about why we got a better response as a team (I know for a fact it wasn’t because of Thor’s flip flops). I checked some work email and saw an award given to a company simply for buying the right keywords around the SuperBowl. It got me kind of riled up. It’s almost as if we’re back where we started at the beginning of the digital marketing industry, where search was seen as a commodity. As a single channel you should be investing in, just because you didn’t want to seem behind the times at an industry conference. Times have changed since then: digital marketing encompasses hundreds of media channels in and of itself and is no longer an “add on.” So why are we seeing this regression to a “set it and forget it” mindset? Running a successful digital campaign isn’t just about buying the right keywords, it’s about syncing social, mobile, display, paid search and SEO to play off each other and work together.

And that’s when it hit me. Team Superhero was more successful because we were a committed unit: we got more candy together than we ever could have individually. That’s the power of multiple channels working together to improve a brand’s findability.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get all God of Thunder on some Twix.