E-investing

Email shines as a permission-based communication channel anchored by a database that captures and uses personally identifiable information. The social channels leverage built-in tools and functionality to motivate and accelerate sharing behaviors. If you can connect the two strategies you will have a potent combo that reaches a brand-aware and brand-positive audience with highly relevant, personal messaging and then gives them the tools to share their enthusiasm along with your news and offers.

For the connection to work best, you need to work it in both directions in a truly coordinated fashion. Your email program should be planned, optimized, and tracked for the standard email metrics plus new measures that illustrate your success in motivating sharing, likes, and other engagement indicators. Similarly, your social programs should be planned and implemented with your email results in mind. And ideally, all your programs would be reviewed and reported in a common dashboard so that you can record and analyze the cross-channel impacts of all of your efforts.

This cross-channel integration is centered in data and more specifically in your email database. Your email database however is not just the repository for all that information; it’s also an action arm that allows you to take advantage of the social data you have collected and the behaviors you have observed and noted.

Here are some ways to best leverage your email and social channels together:

Acquisition

• Give social fans a compelling reason to join your list such as previewed or unique content, tools, coupons, or discounts.
• Intrigue your audience with content snippets or thumbnail images used in social environments. This works especially well as the content is shared among friends, perhaps introducing you to new populations.
• Support users with the tools to easily join your list. A Facebook app is an easy build with a simple form. Don’t give users a ton to fill out. Keep it as simple as possible. Use Facebook Permissions when doing sweeps or contests, which allows you to capture email and other personal information like date of birth without requiring the user to fill out a form.

Testing

• Testing opportunities abound to establish winning content, approaches, or messaging that can be previewed in one channel and rolled out in the other. For instance, mine your blog for popular content, then alert email subscribers to this content and invite them to participate in the discussion. The goal is to move your users across channels with you and to keep track of what they respond to.
• Facebook ads are an inexpensive, quick, and easy way to test imagery and messaging. Best practices in Facebook ad copy share some common characteristics with your email subject lines. Both should be short, to the point, and focused on the call to action (CTA) or reason/benefit of taking the action.

Frequency

• Strategically using your social channels to distribute news and alerts helps you to stay in front of your audience with more regularity without raising the risk of inducing email list fatigue. It’s also free or almost free and makes sense particularly when the message is minor and doesn’t justify an email.

Performance

• Increase opens by using social channels to alert your communities of upcoming emails with news, promos, or offers. Post to your communities about upcoming events with language like “Watch your inbox for a special offer coming just to our subscribers.”
• Conversely, use email to preview certain upcoming social events – encouraging list members to become fans or followers, if they are not already.

Qualifying

• If you use social to acquire new email subscribers, make sure you use a related prize to help weed out the prize-seeking populations who are less relevant to your list. Follow up with a qualifying offer or promo that helps you determine the true (potential) value of that new user.
• Make sure users are vetted through an email preference center so that they can specify frequency, format, etc…and you can establish a positive email relationship right off the bat.

Efficiency

• Leverage up your email content – it’s expensive and time consuming to produce well and you want to get as much value out of it as you can. Look for bloggers who reach your target audience and (carefully) reach out to offer them relevant content.
• Add sharing buttons to all your site and blog content so your users can easily take advantage of the technology to help distribute your content.

Social communities have some unique characteristics that you want to respect and employ in building your cross-channel database and marketing plan. Curating and sharing content are the chief activities in social and you want to support these populations with the right tools while giving them a reason and a roadmap to join your email list.

Part 2 of this exploration of leveraging the email-social connection will explore some specific tips for each of the major social properties.

Big brands, big solutions, big results: B2C search and social strategies. Sign up for free webcast May 17 at 1 pm ET / 10 am PT.

Email shines as a permission-based communication channel anchored by a database that captures and uses personally identifiable information. The social channels leverage built-in tools and functionality to motivate and accelerate sharing behaviors. If you can connect the two strategies you will have a potent combo that reaches a brand-aware and brand-positive audience with highly relevant, personal messaging and then gives them the tools to share their enthusiasm along with your news and offers.

For the connection to work best, you need to work it in both directions in a truly coordinated fashion. Your email program should be planned, optimized, and tracked for the standard email metrics plus new measures that illustrate your success in motivating sharing, likes, and other engagement indicators. Similarly, your social programs should be planned and implemented with your email results in mind. And ideally, all your programs would be reviewed and reported in a common dashboard so that you can record and analyze the cross-channel impacts of all of your efforts.

This cross-channel integration is centered in data and more specifically in your email database. Your email database however is not just the repository for all that information; it’s also an action arm that allows you to take advantage of the social data you have collected and the behaviors you have observed and noted.

Here are some ways to best leverage your email and social channels together:

Acquisition

• Give social fans a compelling reason to join your list such as previewed or unique content, tools, coupons, or discounts.
• Intrigue your audience with content snippets or thumbnail images used in social environments. This works especially well as the content is shared among friends, perhaps introducing you to new populations.
• Support users with the tools to easily join your list. A Facebook app is an easy build with a simple form. Don’t give users a ton to fill out. Keep it as simple as possible. Use Facebook Permissions when doing sweeps or contests, which allows you to capture email and other personal information like date of birth without requiring the user to fill out a form.

Testing

• Testing opportunities abound to establish winning content, approaches, or messaging that can be previewed in one channel and rolled out in the other. For instance, mine your blog for popular content, then alert email subscribers to this content and invite them to participate in the discussion. The goal is to move your users across channels with you and to keep track of what they respond to.
• Facebook ads are an inexpensive, quick, and easy way to test imagery and messaging. Best practices in Facebook ad copy share some common characteristics with your email subject lines. Both should be short, to the point, and focused on the call to action (CTA) or reason/benefit of taking the action.

Frequency

• Strategically using your social channels to distribute news and alerts helps you to stay in front of your audience with more regularity without raising the risk of inducing email list fatigue. It’s also free or almost free and makes sense particularly when the message is minor and doesn’t justify an email.

Performance

• Increase opens by using social channels to alert your communities of upcoming emails with news, promos, or offers. Post to your communities about upcoming events with language like “Watch your inbox for a special offer coming just to our subscribers.”
• Conversely, use email to preview certain upcoming social events – encouraging list members to become fans or followers, if they are not already.

Qualifying

• If you use social to acquire new email subscribers, make sure you use a related prize to help weed out the prize-seeking populations who are less relevant to your list. Follow up with a qualifying offer or promo that helps you determine the true (potential) value of that new user.
• Make sure users are vetted through an email preference center so that they can specify frequency, format, etc…and you can establish a positive email relationship right off the bat.

Efficiency

• Leverage up your email content – it’s expensive and time consuming to produce well and you want to get as much value out of it as you can. Look for bloggers who reach your target audience and (carefully) reach out to offer them relevant content.
• Add sharing buttons to all your site and blog content so your users can easily take advantage of the technology to help distribute your content.

Social communities have some unique characteristics that you want to respect and employ in building your cross-channel database and marketing plan. Curating and sharing content are the chief activities in social and you want to support these populations with the right tools while giving them a reason and a roadmap to join your email list.

Part 2 of this exploration of leveraging the email-social connection will explore some specific tips for each of the major social properties.

Big brands, big solutions, big results: B2C search and social strategies. Sign up for free webcast May 17 at 1 pm ET / 10 am PT.

In politics – as with all marketing – knowing when to see the forest despite the trees could have major repercussions for a campaign. Emphasis on “when,” because in marketing, as with comedy, timing is everything.

Last week, I was reminded of that after spending a long evening at home catching up with the news that President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage. A big meme – in the form of a question – had almost instantly emerged: would the President’s historic statement help or hurt his standing with U.S. Hispanics, one of the most critical swing votes in the 2012 campaign? (Recall this cover story in Time Magazine, and our subsequent coverage of that story.) After Obama’s announcement last week, reporters began asking if Hispanics – many of whom hold conservative views on social issues – would abandon Obama in his hour of need. While the consensus view is that this is unlikely, the nature of the stories that were published – mostly about the numbers – provide a clue on what it takes and what it doesn’t take to win a campaign that’s too close to call (a lesson for all marketers).

Numbers

First, a look at the numbers. Many polls see Americans split on the issue of same-sex marriage. And according to one recent study, 51 percent of Americans polled versus 45 percent said they approved of the president’s decision. But what about Hispanics? In a poll of Hispanics conducted late last year, the numbers for or against gay marriage were 43 percent versus 26 percent. That suggests a lot of support among Hispanics; and a number of commentators, in fact, have dismissed concerns about Obama blunting his Latino edge. Still, this hasn’t stopped reporters from going deep in the analysis of Hispanic culture, which on the one hand has supported the legalization of same-sex marriage in a large country (Argentina) and one of the world’s most populous metropolitan centers (Mexico City) but on the other hand has been slow to reform repressive policies in most of the Spanish-speaking world. (See this article for more on that subject.) It’s different in the United States, say scholars who have studied life north and south of the border. Yet doubts remain whether Hispanic voters – particularly in swing states – will hold for Obama, or go for Mitt Romney, or – just as bad for Obama – stay home.

Frame

But for me, the real story is how many folks analyzing last week’s news – including those examining the Hispanic angle – were in fact focused on numbers. One story took this approach to the extreme, with a state-by-state analysis of the potential impact on the swing vote. While I don’t refute this kind of analysis, I believe it fails to grasp the strategy of making a potentially divisive statement when the numbers are so close. But as more than one pundit has seen, what looks divisive may in fact be unifying. For the battle for gay rights is the next great civil rights issue in America, and it may be one that can enable the many different groups to defy the numbers, transcend their differences, and come together. Hispanics – many who have benefited from civil-rights movements from previous generations – know this better than others. But it’s something that many others can relate to, no matter where they sit on the political spectrum. As one writer noted, “While swing voters may be ambivalent about gay marriage itself, they’re much less comfortable with displays of intolerance. Many of the same voters would punish a politician for considering crusading against it.”

Maypole dance, Alabama, 1939. Source: Wikipedia

Surprise

In a number of posts for this column, I’ve argued the following: that while Hispanics do not represent a monolithic vote – we are too complex, too diverse – we do come together sometimes when we are approached the right way…or approached the wrong way. I call this the “metatribe” effect because being Hispanic today does not mean belonging to a single tribe, but joining with other tribes with whom we share common values. I’m betting the president is thinking of a bigger metatribe, the many groups of diverse United States citizens for whom civil rights is a bedrock issue. And perhaps the timing is right. There’s the old rule in politics that a campaign race can be reframed at the last moment by exposing a flaw in the opposing candidate’s character. It’s called the October surprise. But when the contest is about building coalitions in increasingly complex markets – the type of contest that every marketer is familiar with – the effort to reframe has to come earlier. Behold the May surprise, on the opposite side of the year, in a season known as a time for renewal. For me, that was the big story last week. In a race that was threatening to devolve around issues that divide the electorate, we may have just seen a glimpse of an approach aimed at bringing people together.

I doubt it will be the last effort of this kind. The summer before the election looms large. But Obama’s move sure came as a surprise. Marketers take note. What’s unexpected always reframes the story. And it sure beats a story about numbers.

Join us for a free webcast, “Learn How to Stop Marketing and Start Interacting with Customers,” on Tuesday May 15 at 10 a.m PT / 1 p.m. ET.

May 15, 2012 · by Practical eCommerce Staff

Pay-per-click ads need to set realistic expectations so that when a user clicks there are no surprises. One popular tactic is to actually include a price in the PPC ad. This way shoppers know how much the product costs, and will presumably click only when they have genuine interest.

Podcast: The eCommerce Minute |
Tags: conversion, pay-per-click

Sign in to leave a comment…

Share your opinion.

Facebook user?

This week on the Affiliate Thing podcast, Shawn Collins and Lisa Picarille preview Affiliate Summit Central 2012, talk about the new Dell XPS 13, and how Fort Lee, NJ cracking down on walking texters.

They also talked about Eduardo Saverin being a creep, affiliate nexus tax dead in MN, writing headlines, and the most friendly states for small business.

Show Links

• Parties at Affiliate Summit Central 2012
• How to Ask Questions in Sessions at Affiliate Summit Central 2012
• Affiliate Summit Central 2012 Exhibitor Guide and Agenda at a Glance
• #ASC12 is the Twitter Hashtag for Affiliate Summit Central 2012
• Don’t Miss the Affiliate Summit Central 2012 Sessions
• Unboxing the Dell XPS 13
• New Jersey town bans texting while walking; gum chewing still allowed
• Facebook Co-Founder Saverin Gives Up U.S. Citizenship Before IPO
• Affiliate Nexus Tax DEAD in Minnesota!
• Scamworld: ‘Get rich quick’ schemes mutate into an online monster
• Attribution Part 5: How It Impacts the Perception of Performance Marketing
• Dear Affiliates – We Need You!
• Friendliest States for Small Business

Subscribe to the Affiliate Thing RSS feed or listen on iTunes. You can also send a blank e-mail to affiliatething@aweber.com to get each podcast delivered by e-mail.

Modern marketers need big data analysis. It helps us measure the return on investment on our multi-channel marketing campaign investments and make better decisions about those investments. It lets us leverage direct response and predictive analysis techniques to achieve dramatic increases in targeting precision, campaign lift, and ROI.

Unfortunately, the talent required to unlock the marketing value in data is scarce. One of the key findings in recent market research sponsored by our company is that a “shortage of data-savvy marketing talent” is the No. 1 issue inhibiting investments in marketing data. Talented data scientists – individuals with a combination of data management expertise, analytics modeling knowledge, and business analysis skills – are so hard to find because many technologies needed to tame big data didn’t exist until recently. Most were invented within the past 10 years. However, every firm climbs a maturity curve over time with respect to their ability to leverage increasingly sophisticated classes of data analysis to create competitive advantage. Most firms start out with simple static reports. Insights gained from these reports often lead to follow-on questions and a need for more ad hoc reporting. Over time, demand for forward-looking views of the business lead to the use of predictive analysis techniques. And the most analytically sophisticated firms often use machine learning and optimization techniques to automate decision-making for key business processes.

Just as firms must take a phased approach in climbing the “Big Data Analysis Maturity Curve,” they must also adopt a phased approach to acquiring talent to expose the marketing value in their data. Outsourcing to reduce risk is smart, but ultimately, marketers must build an internal competency around their data and the technology to analyze it. Start by hiring a self-managing hands-on individual to lead your big data analysis initiatives. You are looking for someone with a track record of delivering results – someone with a high probability of achieving outcomes that only a small set of possible candidates could ever achieve; someone with a low tolerance for mediocrity. A single exceptional data scientist can deliver more value than a dozen average performers, and it’s critical to start here because exceptional talent will only work with other exceptionally talented people, so a bad first hire will put your entire big data initiative at risk. Expect to pay them well, but more importantly, recruiting success will depend on your ability to create a big data initiative that truly changes the game for your firm backed up by a commitment to its success from your entire executive team. Candidates will need to see evidence that you are building a culture that inspires and rewards technical talent.

Plan an “early win deliverable” for your big data leader that involves capturing new value from your marketing data assets within their first 90 days on the job. Make the success visible – both inside and outside your firm. Use this success to justify investments in the additional resources and talent required to achieve your next big data analysis objective, and iterate on this “Build, succeed, invest” cycle as you climb the “Big Data Analysis Maturity Curve.”

Importantly, as you climb the “Big Data Analysis Maturity Curve,” the technical challenges associated with your big data objectives become increasingly attractive to data scientists. The industry’s top talent wants to work on the industry’s top challenges. As a result, your ability to raise the quality bar on the talent you recruit will increase with every success you achieve. Marketers who are first to begin climbing the “Big Data Analysis Maturity Curve” – and climb it the fastest – will be the ones that win.

Join us for a free webcast, “Learn How to Stop Marketing and Start Interacting with Customers,” on Tuesday May 15 at 10 a.m PT / 1 p.m. ET.

Dr. Ralph F. Wilson , Web Marketing Today – May 15, 2012

A user-friendly website can increase conversions, such as newsletter
signups, service quotes, or product sales. However, the process of making
a website more usable is non-intuitive. It often involves fully understanding
what a consumer sees.

We spoke recently with an expert on website usability. She’s Kathy
Fealy, owner of KF Multimedia Web
Inc., which devices web strategies to increase traffic and conversion
rates.

Web Marketing Today: You are a usability expert. In a nutshell, what is
usability?

Kathy Fealy: “Usability is a fancy term for user experience, the
process of thinking of your customers first and who is your customer and why
are they coming to your site?”

WMT: What are the common usability problems you see? And, what kinds of
rules of thumb can we give our readers so that they won’t make those same
mistakes?

Fealy: “I notice that a lot of sites have been designed for
everybody. And usually they sell to specific people or their services are going
to be for some specific types of people. So what I tell them to do is to try to
figure out exactly who those people are and to ask what kind of information
they are looking for, what kind of tasks are they wanting to complete? Then we
look a the navigation of the site — calls to action, and so forth — to see if
that flows that direction.”

WMT: In the technical field, it’s called personas.

Fealy: “Personas, yes. I find though that that word scares
people at times.”

WMT: So number one is develop an idea of who your customers are and
design for them. What’s your next rule of thumb?

Fealy: “I tell them to have good headlines, those that not only
will tell people what they are going to be finding, but also might appeal to
their emotions or motivations. And to those headlines tell them exactly what
they are going to find on that page. Because people like to be able to
scan.”

WMT: You know, as an SEO expert, that there’s a difference between a
title and a headline. What is that difference?

Fealy: “The difference is that a title is something that is used
for the search engines. But it’s also used by people when they go to the search
engine result pages.

“A headline is on the web page. Think of a newspaper and how you have your
headlines to help people understand what the contents are going to be
following, and sometimes there are sub-headlines. That’s what a headline is. On
the web page itself. Have it be something that will have them want to
read more.”

WMT: What’s another tip?

Fealy: “Have calls to action, especially if they have a form to
fill out. Submit buttons, they drive me insane because a technician invented
them. I always say have your buttons be something — if you’re going to have
something on button — have it be with the people should be wanting to do next.

“So if it’s to order, say ‘Review and Order,’ something like that would be
the better answer for that button. Sometimes the content management systems
don’t let you make those changes, but a lot of times you can get around
that.”

WMT: Where should you place your menu or menus? What’s the best from an
overall standpoint?

Fealy: “What I suggest is that they should have the menus, the main
heading is at the top of the page, below the main header. Like below their
banner for their logo or their information about their site. They
shouldn’t be at the very top of the page.

“Like right now with WordPress, the default is to put it a lot at the very
very top of the page, but people have banner blindness, so they may not see the
menu right away.”

WMT: Once you get the basics up, then you start testing to see what other
problems you might have.

Fealy: “Right, but I also say that they should test earlier too. I
mean there’s simple things — just by seeing if people understand what the page
is about.”

WMT: Testing also helps your clients realize how much they need this
process done.

Fealy: “Yes, and sometimes where the problems aren’t what they
would think they are, because they are so used to the site themselves.”

A user-friendly website can increase conversions, such as newsletter signups, service quotes, or product sales.  However, the process of making a website more usable is non-intuitive. It often involves stepping outside of a webmaster’s viewpoint to more fully understand what a consumer sees.

We spoke recently with an expert on website usability.  She’s Kathy Fealy, owner of KF Multimedia Web
Inc., which devices web strategies to increase traffic and conversion rates.

Web Marketing Today: You are a usability expert. In a nutshell, what is usability?

Kathy Fealy: “Usability is a fancy term for user experience, the process of thinking of your customers first and who is your customer and why are they coming to your site?”

WMT: What are the common usability problems you see? And, what kinds of rules of thumb can we give our readers so that they won’t make those same mistakes?

Fealy: “I notice that a lot of sites have been designed for everybody. And usually they sell to specific people or their services are going to be for some specific types of people. So what I tell them to do is to try to figure out exactly who those people are and to ask what kind of information they are looking for, what kind of tasks are they wanting to complete? Then we look a the navigation of the site — calls to action, and so forth — to see if that flows that direction.”

WMT: In the technical field, it’s called personas.

Fealy: “Personas, yes.  I find though that that word scares people at times.”

WMT: So number one is develop an idea of who your customers are and design for them.  What’s your next rule of thumb?

Fealy: “I tell them to have good headlines, those that not only will tell people what they are going to be finding, but also might appeal to their emotions or motivations. And to those headlines tell them exactly what they are going to find on that page. Because people like to be able to scan.”

WMT: You know, as an SEO expert, that there’s a difference between a title and a headline.  What is that difference?

Fealy: “The difference is that a title is something that is used for the search engines. But it’s also used by people when they go to the search engine result pages.

“A headline is on the web page. Think of a newspaper and how you have your headlines to help people understand what the contents are going to be following, and sometimes there are sub-headlines. That’s what a headline is. On the web page itself.  Have it be something that will have them want to read more.”

WMT: What’s another tip?

Fealy: “Have calls to action, especially if they have a form to fill out. Submit buttons, they drive me insane because they were invented by a technician. I always say have your buttons be something — if you’re going to have something on button — have it be with the people should be wanting to do next.

“So if it’s to order, say ‘Review and Order,’ something like that would be the better answer for that button. Sometimes the content management systems don’t let you make those changes, but a lot of times you can get around that.”

WMT: Where should you place your menu or menus? What’s the best from an overall standpoint?

Fealy: “What I suggest is that they should have the menus, the main heading is at the top of the page, below the main header. Like below their banner for their logo or their information about their site.  They shouldn’t be at the very top of the page.

“Like right now with WordPress, the default is to put it a lot at the very very top of the page, but people have banner blindness, so they may not see the menu right away.”

WMT: Once you get the basics up, then you start testing to see what other problems you might have.

Fealy: “Right, but I also say that they should test earlier too. I mean there’s simple things — just by seeing if people understand what the page is about.”

WMT: Testing also helps your clients realize how much they need this process done.

Fealy: “Yes, and sometimes where the problems aren’t what they would think they are, because they are so used to the site themselves.”

WMT: Right. Hey thanks for sharing with us. Can you tell me about your business and what you do?

Fealy: “Well I work with small to medium size businesses. I help them develop web strategies, take an overall look at their web marketing plan, and then help them through getting traffic to their site, as well as improving their conversion by usability.”

Kathy Fealy is the owner of KF Multimedia Web Inc., which helps small to medium businesses take an overall look at their web marketing plans, help them get traffic to their sites, as well as improving conversion rates by usability. This interview was recorded on November 15, 2011 at the SES Conference in Chicago.

Jeff Sexton – May 15, 2012

Lead generation sites are different than ecommerce sites. They usually sell services rather than products. The services are typically “considered purchases,” involving more research than most consumer products. And the buying-shopping-consideration cycle of a prospect is often far longer than typical ecommerce products.

All of those factors affect what areas and ideas you should consider testing first.  With that in mind, here’s a prioritized list of important areas to test.

1. Improvements and Assurances on Your Lead Form

There’s enough material on this one item to cover at least an entire article.  But the major points are as follows.

1. Addressing and obviating prospects’ concerns with your form design and copy, and
2. Minimizing requested information while retaining lead quality

Think about the kinds of questions that run through your own mind when filling out a lead form, such as:  

• What happens after I submit this form?  
• How long until the company replies?  
• Who will reply?  
• Is the company going to email or call?  
• Am I going to get auto-subscribed to spammy newsletters?  
• Will I get a high-pressure pitch, or is the company willing to just answer my questions?  
• Do the company have a privacy policy for this information?

So keeping those questions in mind, consider the following two forms.

One of these forms directly or indirectly addresses all of the prospect’s concerns while asking for a minimum amount of information. They other form answers nothing while asking for an inordinate amount of personal information. Model your lead form on the former rather than the latter.

2. Addressing “Precipitant Events” with Your Messaging

Services are usually purchased in two ways.

1. After a particularly long consideration period punctuated by a precipitating event;
2. Under duress following a precipitating event.

A homeowner might believe that he ought to get his septic tank pumped, and put it off until his neighbor ends up with having to replace his septic system.  After that, the homeowner may be ready.

Or, he might be oblivious to the need to maintain his septic system until his plumber informs him that his septic tank is backed up, and most likely broken, or in the best case, in need of pumping.  

Another example is fitness. I might read about and possibly contemplate joining a gym for months or even years, and then finally decide to do something either after seeing vacation photos of my blubbery body. Or I might have some kind of heart health scare.

Either way, there’s a precipitating event involved in getting me ready to buy.  And chances are your sales and customer service staffs know all about these precipitating events.

Look at your website and determine if your messaging and copy speaks to the emotional needs of someone experiencing one of these events.  Then create and test new copy that speaks to a prospect in the midst of one of those precipitating events.

3. Creating a Lead Nurturing Program for Early Stage Buyers

How do you talk to visitors who are considering getting a service, but who aren’t quite ready to pull out their wallets, or even talk to a sales representative?

The tried and true method is to engage these visitors with free content structured around their earlier stage research needs. The visitors give you an email address, and you give them a whitepaper, course, or shopping checklist.  

If you’re not doing this, you’re missing out on valuable leads and sales. And if you are doing this, it’s likely that the material you are providing those prospects doesn’t appeal for the most likely, upcoming precipitant events.  

For example, you’re offering a free report on “5 Things to Look for In a Pool Cleaning Service.”  If you know that a precipitant event for buying your services involves hard-to-kill algae blooms, you might want to ensure that your report emphasizes your business’s guaranteed ability to turn a green pool blue in 48 hours or less.  

That way, when the precipitant event — i.e., a sickly green pool only a few days before a planned pool party — actually descends upon the owners, they will know exactly who can fix that problem. That sale will be yours to lose.

Jeff Sexton of JeffSextonWrites.com
is a skilled copywriter who has consulted with several Fortune 50 companies, run hundreds of
messaging tests, and provides copywriting services to companies large
and small.

Christine Churchill , KeyRelevance – May 15, 2012

If you’ve been running a pay-per-click advertising campaign for a while, you have
probably achieved a level of performance that is providing a profitable return
on ad spend — “ROAS.”  The next step to
getting the most from PPC advertising is maximizing the percentage of time in which your
ads are showing for relevant, converting search queries.

In AdWords, this is called “Impression Share,” which Google
defines as the percentage of impressions you received divided by the estimated
number of impression you were eligible to receive.  Google likens total Impression Share to a big online pie with your piece of the
pie being your specific Impression Share.

Both Google and Microsoft offer Impression Share Metrics. But for simplicity this article will focus on the AdWords’ version.

Types of Impression Share Metrics

Google provides several metrics for determining your Impression Share.  Understanding and using these metrics effectively can help
you expand your traffic online. The three most useful metrics for tracking
impression share are:

• Lost Impression Share (Budget). These are
  lost opportunities due to daily spend limitations.  If you have no budget issues, this metric will be at or
  close to zero.

• Lost Impression Share (Rank). These are lost
  opportunities due to low bid prices, regardless of budget.  A low/zero number here means your ads
  are not getting pushed off the page by higher-performing competitors.

• Exact Match Impression Share (Search only). The percentage of impressions that exactly matched your keyword divided by estimated exact match
  impressions for which you were eligible. 
  Think of this as “Lost IS (Budget),” but ONLY for exact keyword matches in your
  account.  In contrast to the other
  two metrics, above, this metric counts opportunities instead of lost
  opportunities.

  If your ads are
  showing as often as possible, this metric will have a value close to 100 percent.  Note that broad and phrase keywords
  will also generate Exact Match IS data for those searches that match the
  broad/phrase keywords in your account.

From Google’s perspective, a lost “opportunity” is
not necessarily every search for which the keyword would match.  Google takes Quality Score and maximum bid
prices into account. So if you’re bidding a nickel in an auction with top bid
prices higher than $10 (for example), Google would not consider that auction
part of your lost opportunities. 
Google indicates that a 2-times increase in price would be a potential auction,
whereas a 10-times increase being needed would not.

Google also provides an overall Impression Share metric, but this metric is less useful than those broken down by budget, rank,
and exact match.  We will focus on
these metrics instead.

How to Get The Metrics To Show

Since Google doesn’t show the metrics by default, you will
need to turn on the metrics manually. 
To get the Impression Share metrics to be visible in your reports, do
the following:

1. From within your Adwords Account, go to the Campaigns
   Tab.

2. Click on the Columns/Customize Columns/Competitive
   metrics pull-down menu (circled below). 
   Choose all three impression share metrics to start.

3. Click
   “Save” and this will cause your impression share metrics to appear. (See image
   below).

These metrics are available at the Campaign and AdGroup
level, but not at keyword/ad level

Graphic showing where to go in your AdWords account to turn on
Impression Share Metrics.

How to Use The Metrics: Impression Share Problem
Scenarios

Limited

Budget. If “Lost Impression Share (Budget)” is high and your ROAS is profitable, you need to
raise your daily budgets.  High
return/high budget campaigns should be raised first. But assuming ROAS is good
and you have the cash flow, aim for Lost Impression (Budget) to be close to zero.

Limited Performance. -If “Lost Impression Share (Rank)” is higher, this means that your maximum cost-per-click bids (or cost-per-acquisition targets, if using cost-per-acquisition bidding) are too low for your ads to
place competitively.  Consider
additional performance-tuning to improve ROAS.  If ROAS is well above your limit, consider raising
bids.  This will make your cost per
conversion worsen somewhat, but the increase in volume might make up in total
profitability.

Both Lost Impression Share Metrics Are Non-Zero. Tune your budgets first, since this will raise
volume without generally making sales more expensive.

Exact Match Impression Share. If
your Exact Match Impression Share is low — say, below 80 percent — then your budget may be being
wasted on poorly target phrases. 
Run a Search Query report (at the AdGroup level) and review the search
queries for potential negative keywords to add to the account.  If you are selling digital cameras, for
example, you might not want your ads showing for “digital camera
reviews” so negating “review” and “reviews” might help
your budget by showing ads to searchers further along in the buying
process.

What about “Relative Click Through Rate”?

There is another performance metric available along with the Impression Share metrics called “Relative Click Through Rate”.  Relative CTR gives you feedback on the performance of the click through rate of your ads compared to other ads in the same auction.  This is one of the metrics that factors
into the Quality Score, so you might want to review this as well. 

A low Relative CTR means that your ads are less effective
than other ads in the same auction. 
This may mean that the ad copy is not effective — warranting an A/B
test.

If you are
using “dynamic keyword insertion” (DKI) awkwardly, then your resulting ad might
be less compelling or plainly bad. 
See the graphic below for an example of a poor DKI ad which would likely
have a low CTR and certainly doesn’t represent the company as they would
prefer.

Graphic showing example of awkward use of DKI, resulting in a less than
optimal ad.

Also consider
whether the keyword/search query mismatches are showing ads for poorly targeted
searches.  For example the
following ad showed for ads related to a search for “car insurance
job” could have easily been avoided with the addition of a negative
keyword for “job.”

Graphic
showing example of keyword/query mismatch:  A search for “car insurance job”
should NOT return
a general ad for car insurance.

Metrics Help Fine Tune Ad Delivery

The Impression Share metrics provide a useful way
to track your share of impressions and to help guide you to increase your share
of ad impressions.  Monitoring Impression
Share metrics regularly can ensure you get your fair share of impressions and
even increase your traffic from AdWords because the metrics let you know where
you need to make changes.

Christine Churchill is president of KeyRelevance.com, a full service Dallas search engine marketing company that specializes in helping businesses succeed online. Christine and her experienced team of online marketers provide a holistic approach to marketing: increasing a site’s visibility, improving the user experience on the site, and maximizing the site’s conversion potential.

I’ve been on a long journey with Dell products that began back in the mid-1990s. I have continued buying Dell machines for my business and family, because they’ve been reliable, easy, and fast.

My latest computer is the Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook, which is just a gorgeous, light, and speedy laptop. I was excited to get this one as a gift from Dell to share my candid views of it.

I got a chance to meet a bunch of the folks at Dell in 2010 when I was selected to sit on their inaugural Customer Advisory Panel, so thank you to them for sending the XPS 13 my way.

Anyhow, on to the XPS 13 – it’s amazing to see how Dell has evolved from some of those back-breaking laptops I used to haul around years ago.

This beauty weighs less than 3 pounds and it’s less than a quarter inch thick, which is not so much more than an iPad.

I think this is significant, because I’ve been hearing from lots of people that they travel with their iPad over a laptop these days. Personally, I want and need the power that comes with a laptop over a tablet.

Some other specs I like are the backlit keyboard, nearly 9 hours of battery time, and the HD display (Corning Gorilla Glass – nice when it encounters my rough travel and my 4 rough kids).

It’s also got a machined aluminum body and carbon fiber base. Now that doesn’t really mean anything to me, but I like the way it looks, and the fact that this enables it to be light and cool to the touch.

Now for the guts of it – the XPS 13 boots super fast with it’s SSD (solid state drive) and Intel Rapid Start Technology. They’re available with 2nd generation Intel Core i7 processors.

The base model runs $999 with 4 GB of memory, a 128 GB solid state drive, and it runs on Windows 7.

As far as ports, it’s got two USB ports and one Mini DisplayPort.

I was going to say my one issue with the XPS 13 is that I often take my laptop to use for presentations with my projector, and the projector uses a VGA connector.

But I just searched and found that I can just grab an adapter for pretty cheap to run the XPS 13 to my projector. Nice.

I’m excited to make this my everyday laptop.