An Internet Marketing study that wrapped up this month last year revealed excellent measurement goals for Internet Marketing campaign management. The study was based on 26 e-commerce sites, that generated 20.8 million visits and 108 million page views over a twelve month period.
Conversion is the goal of any marketing effort. Here are the conversion rates you should be benchmarking your Internet Marketing campaigns against:
1. Paid Search – 2.03%
2. Organic Search – 1.26%
3. Direct Url Entry – 7.38%
4. Email or Another Site link – 6.58%
Overall the average conversion rate was 3.6%. If you are hitting these numbers or doing better, your Internet marketing campaigns are performing well.
Make your Call To Action Clear – Your visitor is not a mind reader, keep the call to action button or sign up form above the fold
Write in Second Person – You or Your not I or we
Be Persuasive (not clever) – Inform, Persuade and Motivate
Be Crystal Clear – What do you want them to know what do you want them to do
Keep important stuff firs and in bullets – It is harder to read on a screen. People read half the speed. Make your points in first and last sentence or first and last bullet
Use Bookends
Keep it short and vary the length – The first paragraph should be 1-2 lines. No paragraph should be more than 4-5 lines long
Write to the screen environment – Keep testimonials and call to action above the fold, test on several browsers
Don’t ask for what you don’t need – don’t make forms to long or all field mandatory
Search Marketing is still in its infancy both from a technological and market perspective. Currently search marketing comprises roughly only about 7% of the overall global advertising spend. In 2009 this translated to $26 Billion US in search advertising. It is expected that by 2015 the search market will grow to $55 Billion or 11% of the global advertising market.
The spectacular growth in search marketing can be attributed to the fact that return on investment (ROI) can be precisely measured.
The search marketing, PPC or Paid Placement leader is Google. Since its start just 12 years ago, Google has gone on to dominate this market. Today it owns the search market space. Its global market share is 74%. Its US market share is 83%.
Global PPC Spend by Country
The US is still by far the largest search market in the world, comprising of 42.4% of worldwide search spend. With the UK far behind in second place at 11.6% and Japan in third place at a distant 8.6%.
Wharton has written two papers on the effect of geography on Internet retail sales.
The first paper concludes that off line word of mouth is more effective than online word of mouth. This should clue marketers in how to more effectively manage referrals.
The second paper concludes that long tail strategy is valid and the paper supports a niche oriented sales strategy.
If you are not advertising online, especially if you are in the retail industry you are missing out in significant sales opportunities.
According to Comscore World Matrix study in July 2007, Canada had the highest online penetration at 70% (20.6 million unique users) even beating out the USA which had 60% penetration. Canadians spend on average 43 hours per month online. While online 78% of Canadian’s use search engines to research online and offline purchases. Out of these doing research 27% purchased online while 45% used the information to purchase via a regular retail channel.
Highest Worldwide Internet Usage per month
The demographics for those searching online are typically adults both females and males with a household income of $60,000 and over. One quarter of the online surfers have post secondary education.
Adults 18+:
90%
Male vs. Female ratio:
50 / 50%
Household Income $60K+:
56%
Post-Secondary Education:
24%
Source: comScore Media Metrix Canada, May 2005
Although every industry can benefit from search marketing program, by far the one industry that sees the most action from a PPC program is the retail industry followed by Corporate Presence and Travel.
Google says the trend for search is increasing despite the recession. Consumers are searching more and the behavior will not change going forward. Google says marketers should not only focus on the conversion aspect of search but also the brand value.
Google’s Maile Ohye says focus on SEO basics and not so much on trying to out smart the search engine algorithms. Google along with other search engines constantly change their rank algorithms, that renders the majority of SEO tactics useless.
