Select, Don't Accumulate

Select, Don't Accumulate - cont'd

Real Life

One of my clients (product and names changed to protect the innocent) sells a household product online. The first time he met with me, he told me he was very unhappy with Internet marketing and thought he might just give it up. When I asked why, he told me he was paying $15,000 per month in pay-per-click charges. Wow, I said, that's a lot. Are you selling enough to justify that? Yes, he replied, but I don't know if my pay-per-click investment is helping, or if I'm just flushing money down the toilet.

Simple enough. We used conversion tracking software provided by Overture and Google and spent a week watching which terms generated sales, and which ones didn't. At the same time, we researched the client's audience, asking potential customers what they looked for in an online resource. The results showed us that most of the terms our client was using were far too broad — imagine someone advertising under the word “snow” when they make skis, and you'll understand what I mean. He was accumulating traffic, not selecting it.

We reduced the scope of his campaigns by removing terms that were neither audience-relevant nor generating any direct sales. We kept some phrases and terms that were not generating sales, though, if our audience research showed those terms were promising for return customers.

His monthly pay-per-click costs decreased to $3,000, saving him $12,000 per month. Sales stayed the same. When we first proposed our plan to him, he was concerned that reducing the volume of traffic to his site would hurt sales. But by researching his audience and switching to a campaign based on selection, rather than accumulation, we got the best of both worlds.

Another client in a services-based business received plenty of traffic on their site from word-of-mouth and free search results. They weren't worried about return on investment. But they felt their site wasn't generating any real business. After a little research, we discovered that most folks were going to the site for the wrong reason — to look at pretty photographs, and a particular scrolling news ticker that their previous developer had installed on their site. This was a perfect example of ego-driven design — the designer and client worked together to build something they liked, and got a lot of notoriety for it, but they didn't generate any real business.

We restructured their site around their intellectual assets, and placed an offer to download a free white paper from the site — after registration — on the home page. Traffic fell steeply, but they began getting a steady stream of qualified leads to their site. With a measurable conversion goal — the white paper download — in place, we were able to track how efficiently we were selecting traffic. Over time we expanded their online marketing efforts to newsletter sponsorships and other advertising venues — for each campaign, we could measure the results and narrow or refocus our efforts as the data indicated.

Select, Don't Accumulate

If most Internet marketers have it all wrong, a few get it right. The success stories — Amazon.com, Google and Flickr, to name a few — all have one thing in common. They market what they deliver. If you select your visitors you'll sell more, for less, and have a far happier client base.

So demand better marketing. Select, don't accumulate.

About Ian Lurie

Ian Lurie is an Internet marketing professional in Seattle, Washington. His firm, Portent Interactive, has helped businesses select their audience since 1995. Clients include Fairchild Bridal Group, Princess Lodges, Dessy and Alfred Sung.

Ian also publishes an Internet Marketing blog at conversationmarketing.com.

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