Tag Archives: search engine marketing

Online Marketing

Conversion Tracking Is Vital For Search Engine Marketing

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Today a customer called and spoke to one of our Account Executives. This customer had just launched a brand new website selling holiday baskets targeted towards children and was very excited about it. The website looked good and their product seemed solid.

They told their Account Executive that they were looking to drive as much traffic as possible to their site and had just started doing all sorts of search engine marketing. She initially setup accounts on both Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing.

When their Account Executive asked the following question, the response was very alarming:

Account Executive: “Did you setup conversion tracking for both Google and Yahoo?”
Customer: “What’s conversion tracking?”
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Me Listening From The Hallway: “Oh brother!”

You must and I mean must have some type of conversion tracking in place if you are going to do search engine marketing. One of the biggest benefits of online marketing is that you can get key measurements in real-time to maximize your results.

Conversion tracking essentially means “tell me which ads actually result in the person (or potential customer) reaching my desired goal”. This goal may be purchasing your product, signing up for a free trial, joining your newsletter, contacting you for more information, or anything else you may think of.

If you are not measuring your conversion rates for search engine marketing (SEM) then you are flying blind! And, while you’re flying blind, you’re dumping more and more money into certain ads that may not be producing anything positive for you at all.

There is no excuse for not measuring your conversions since both Google and Yahoo embed conversion tracking options into your advertiser control panel. And, it’s very easy to setup, since you typically just have to copy and paste a little bit of HTML code onto your ‘conversion success’ page.

Conversion Tracking

With 30 seconds of effort you’ll have vital conversion information at your fingertips that Google and Yahoo even show you prominently on the page as you review your account. With this information you can make better decisions to help boost your online marketing initiatives.

So, stop flying blind…welcome to the information age….make sure you HAVE some important information you can use!

Email Marketing, Online Marketing

Don’t Overlook Landing Pages for your Email Marketing Campaigns

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I just finished writing an article about driving sales with landing pages, which you can find in email marketing university.

But, I wanted to post that topic here as well because so often it is overlooked by marketers.

Just like search engine advertising produces better conversion rates, email marketing has the same reaction.

With so much clutter in the marketplace these days, it’s vital that you guide your customers down a very fine path. Don’t give a link to your homepage, if you know they’re interested in a specific product.

It’s amazing how many email campaigns I see where someone is selling widgets and it’s a featured item in their current newsletter. Below the sales blurb about the widget, there is a learn more link. Clicking that link should definitely absolutely positively be bringing me to a page about widgets. But, instead it brings me to their companies homepage where I am bombarded with a ton of other distractions and messages coming at me.

You know what… maybe this customer was willing to click ‘buy now’ or ‘add to cart’ if it was right their on their screen with some more product info. But, now you’ve dropped them into a maze and said “you work for it if you want to order this!”

Not really a good email marketing or general marketing strategy.

The quickest way to get your customer from point A to point B. That’s what you’ve got to be thinking about!