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As marketing dollars dry up, targeted advertising is
gaining. How do you run your direct response program?
IMAGINE
THIS: YOU OPEN AN ACCOUNT IN A MAJOR search engine by
charging $10 to your credit card. You then place highly
focused ads in the account pointing to the relevant
page of your e-commerce site. By the end of the day
you have received 2000 visitors to your site at the
cost of $1000, ($0.50 per click). And best of all, you
haven’t even had to pay for the ads yet..
Further
imagine that you have made 20 sales at $500 each, ending
the day with $10,000 revenue. You just made a $3000
gross profit. You then pay the search engine $1000 and
you are left with a net profit of $2000.
Direct
Response Marketing – Redefined
This is today’s reality. Immediate Purchase Intent is
the name of the game when it comes to Direct Response
Marketing. A traditional marketer on-line and off-line
is not accustomed to having immediately measurable ROI
like this. And Search engines are a cost effective way
to acquire qualified prospects, and convert them in
to buyers immediately.
Search
is one of the Internet’s most essential and wanted services.
As popular as email, search has morphed into an advertising
avenue that leverages the web’s inherent ability to
link consumers and small- to mid-sized businesses in
ways that traditional media alternatives cannot match.
Where
else can advertisers “self-serve” themselves to an audience
of 200 million-plus consumers, communicate directly
with only those prospects who are specifically and currently
seeking the goods, services and information that the
advertiser provides, and at a cost of $0.15-$0.50 for
each customer lead? No other advertising avenue, online
or offline is growing as fast as search is currently.
In my opinion, search’s impressive growth through the
worst ad market in a decade is a testament to its value
proposition and potential.
Controlled
ROI
The great thing about search-based advertising is that,
as an advertiser you can control your keywords and ad
creative in real time by adjusting the position of your
ads, based on its real-time measurable performance/cost
analysis.
By
using some simple software like GOTOAST you can do this
optimization across the board in all the search engines,
portals, directories and intermediate syndication channels
such as Overture. These apps automatically check the
status and position of your bids as often as you choose
and makes appropriate strategic bidding changes based
on your parameters. It saves you money by making sure
you do not overpay for your preferred position and helps
increase sales by ensuring your listings are located
where you want them, at the price range you are willing
to pay. Whether you have thousands of keywords or just
very active, competitive listings, for only dollars
a day, it makes your life easier and puts more money
on your bottom line.
Instant Gratification
And if the ROI works for you, OR you are smart enough
to make this work for you, one can control as much as
1 million keywords through these types of software in
real time. This can help you generate large amount of
revenue with a tight control on ROI, which you can measure
and control every minute. Tens of thousands of business
owners already know about one of the best kept secrets
on the Internet: paying for small text advertisements
on search engines on a “pay-per-click” basis. Probably
the best part about pay-per-click advertising is there
is no waiting around. Instant Gratification. Qualified
visitors to your web site, no matter what your budget
is.
Search and Search Engines
Search is becoming the fulcrum on which much of the
business on the Internet swings and has become one of
the interesting businesses on the Internet, with growing
consumer usage, powerful advertiser adoption, advance
technological progress, and enormous revenue and profit
growth for many search players. Pay-for-performance
search advertising has been so successful that it has
focused every serious player’s attention on its commercial
promise and profitability.
In
fact, the Internet boom all started with search during
the initial public offerings of Yahoo!, Excite, Infoseek,
and Lycos in 1996 and 1997. Since then, search has “reinvented’
itself several times - from search engine, to portal,
to traditional media partner, to struggling .com’s,
to re-emerging survivors. Ironically, four years of
“progress” reached this tipping point: search is now
a business, not just a feature.
A
Web search is like a three act play: it starts with
the consumer who would like to make the search, who
then uses the software and other technology in Act Two
which makes the search possible, and ends with the protagonist’s
arrival at the web page that was searched for. Value
is added to this interplay when consumers are able to
easily find the information they are looking for. Consumers
gain value from arriving at sites that fulfill their
needs or suit their interests; destination sites derive
value from an inbound flow of visitors who are interested
in what they have to offer; and search hosts and intermediaries
extract value from making the introduction and the link
between the two.
It
is estimated that approximately 60 million households,
or 90% of the online audience, use Web search services
each month. Internet users typically conduct about 6
billion Web searches with over 10 million different
search terms employed regularly. The most popular search
sites today are Google.com, Yahoo!.com, Microsoft’s
MSN, and AOL. The most-used search technologies are
offered by Google, Inktomi, FAST, and AltaVista, which
are cannibalizing each other at an alarming rate.
Paid
Listing Phenomena
Many online advertisers are finding that the performance
of Web banners, pop-ups and other forms of Internet
advertising including e-mail is declining. Customers
are starting to ignore anything on a page that looks
like an advertisement. Because of the decreasing effectiveness
of these forms of advertising, paid search engine placement
has emerged as an effective, important but controversial,
alternative because they are not necessarily perceived
as ads.
These
paid listings allow you to truly buy your way to the
top of the major search engines. All you have to do
is bid on search terms related to your product or service,
and then provide a listing for the search results. The
amount of traffic you bring to your site is limited
primarily by how much you bid.
Here
is a summary of the many unique advantages of paid listings:
• They generate large volumes of site traffic easily.
• They let you avoid the complexities of web pages search
engine optimization.
• They give you immediate, measurable results.
• You only pay for listings that get clicked on, so
it’s a cost- effective way to do targeted marketing.
Overture, Findwhat, Kanoodle, Espotting and Sprinks,
are top-rated companies handling paid listings. You’ll
find their listings showing up on most of the major
search engines, portals and directories except for Google.Google
has a proprietary paid listing program that’s highly
rated as well.
How can you capitalize on a paid- listing program?
• Choose the web site pages and offers you want to promote
with paid listings
• Calculate your average profit-per-purchase for the
items or services on these pages
• Find the keywords and phrases consumers are most likely
to use to find your listings
• Write paid-listings results that include your search
phrase
• Place listings using a link to your landing pages
that can be easily tracked
• Figure ROI by monitoring the cost of your listings
against sales
• Re-write your ads and adjust your placement bids on
a continuing basis to keep them in the optimal position
in the marketplace
And good luck!
By Yatin Patel
Published in http://www.siliconindia.com
June 2003
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