By Linda Girard
May 7, 2009
Businesses seeking to tap into the millions trafficking the Web every hour of every day to boost sales often turn to search marketing. The Web is an incredibly powerful way to reach customers when they’re looking for your goods or services: Research indicates that online sales activities are expected to rise 11 percent to $156 billion this year, and make up 7 percent of overall retail revenue in 2009, compared with 6 percent in 2008.
From paid search to online advertising, the Web offers a powerful platform to connect with potential customers, increase brand awareness and generate sales opportunities. Search marketing also derives new value from an existing Web site and is a natural complement to strategic offline marketing activities.
For all the buzz it generates, search marketing is still a nascent, somewhat misunderstood marketing channel for most businesses. While it’s true that companies like Google make it easy for businesses to launch an online advertising campaign or understand Web site analytics, putting the pieces of the puzzle together to form a cohesive, results-driven marketing effort isn’t as simple as point and click.
Many businesses new to search marketing, or those just dabbling in search marketing activity without the guidance of an expert are prone to make mistakes. Although relatively benign, these search marketing blunders can quickly turn the potential for return-on-investment into missed opportunity.
• Myopic vision that doesn’t leverage the myriad ways to grow a business. Search marketing is most successful when it exists as part of a marketing matrix that includes a robust Web presence and offline marketing activities, too. The interconnectedness between marketing activities, like search engine optimization and public relations, all interact to drive the brand awareness and recognition that leads to sales.
• Expecting search marketing miracles. You want to own page one for the same reason as everyone else — because it creates competitive advantage. It stands to reason that ‘sustainable’ competitive advantage isn’t something that happens overnight. Be prepared to support search marketing with appropriate budget and staffing as you would any other strategic initiative with the possibility of transforming your business.
• Recklessly gambling on paid search. When you are paying to bring each visitor to your site through programs such as Google AdWords, you can’t afford to leave what happens next to chance. Paid search marketing is a complex series of factors that influence the ultimate success of your campaigns, and each factor must be actively managed. These factors include how well the “offer” you make in the ad translates to the “landing page” where visitors start, if you have included a solid “call to action,” and if you have made available one or more measurable ways for the customer to contact you. When managed well, these factors converge to drive sales in a highly scalable and repeatable way — we dub this phenomenon an online sales engine.
• Failure to measure. The beauty of online marketing is the ability to measure and improve — it’s not something you can set and forget. (At least, not if you want to harness the power of online marketing!) Sophisticated search marketers will connect exact key word clicks with closed sales, regardless of the medium or length of the sales cycle. And in fact, some of the greatest opportunities in online marketing are in generating leads for high value products and services that are then closed by a traditional sales team.
While the Web is ubiquitous, search marketing isn’t for everyone. Like anything that has value, search marketing takes time and attention to generate meaningful results. Understanding the common mistakes made by well-intentioned marketers is the first step in determining if you’re prepared to commit what it takes for a successful search marketing campaign.
Linda Girard is co-founder of Pure Visibility, a strategic integrator of Internet marketing services based in Ann Arbor, Mich.