SmartSearch Marketing's CEO lists the four steps to the desired conversion: find, drive, convert and engage the consumer.

For the growing number of companies that are serious about search marketing, we are now entering the third generation of the internet. The first generation consisted of building a website. In the second, lots of effort, in terms of both time and money, was spent with a goal of driving traffic to the website (see Google's revenue growth). As we enter the third generation, the focus is changing from just visiting a website to persuading visitors to take a desired action-- most often referred to as conversion. Common types of conversions include online sales, lead generation, newsletter sign-up and customer acquisition, although it could be any action an organization deems highly valuable.

To fully maximize search advertising ROI, you now must look at and manage the entire search lifecycle-- from "Search-to-Sale." The four-step Search Lifecycle Management (SLM) process includes: 

• FIND interested and qualified prospects online. 
• DRIVE these prospects to your website cost-effectively. 
• CONVERT visitors into online leads, and ultimately...
• ENGAGE leads and turn them into customers and sales.

Now, let's look at the components of a successful search marketing program that includes all of these elements collectively managed together.

Find and drive traffic: pre-click campaign management
For those companies solidly in the second generation of the internet, you are already quite familiar with pre-click campaign management, which involves finding and cost-effectively driving visitors to your website. The primary search engine marketing efforts utilized are paid search advertising or pay-per-click advertising (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO).

Paid search advertising involves bidding on keywords to appear in the "Sponsored Results" section of the search results page. In most cases, the advertiser bidding the highest amount appears in position one, the second highest bidder appears in position two and so on.

Key benefits of PPC:

• A controlled message-- the advertiser is able to control the message the searcher reads within defined guidelines.
• Immediate results-- as soon as the advertiser starts their campaign, the listing shows up on the search results page.

The other primary method utilized in pre-click campaign management is SEO. SEO is the art and science of improving a website's organic or natural ranking on search results.

Key benefits of SEO: 

• No media fees.
• Organic rankings commonly get better clickthrough rates and conversion rates.

It also is worth noting that it takes time, typically months, to see results with SEO, and there are no guarantees that you will maintain a high ranking.

Convert your visitors: post-click campaign management
At this point you have a visitor at your website that, one way or another you have paid to get there. Now what? First, you must persuade them to convert from a website visitor to an active sale lead. This involves creating the appropriate user experience on the landing page to get the visitor to take action. Let's look at the basics of creating a compelling landing page.

The first and most important step is to create a conspicuous call-to-action-- you must tell the visitor what you want them to do. Concurrently, you must tell them why they should take the action-- in other words, answer the question: What's in it for me? By the way, you can create more than one call-to-action as long as the landing page does not get too busy and create too much competition between the actions.

Other key elements of a good landing page include: 

• Pictures-- always include a picture or visual representation of your product. Landing pages with product pictures always convert better.
• Testimonials-- include, above the fold if possible, a customer testimonial, especially if you do not have broad brand recognition.
• Bullet points of unique selling propositions-- visitors are much more likely to read bulleted points than a paragraph of product information.
• Keep the page clean-- more open space is preferred to a clutter of words and graphics; don't make the mistake of trying to say everything on the landing page.
• Test, test, test-- the websites that have the best conversion rates are continually building and testing new landing pages to maximize search marketing ROI.
• Conversion action process-- make sure the conversion process is short and simple, whether it is a shopping cart, lead form or white paper sign-up. Be careful of asking for to much information.

Conclusion
To maximize search marketing ROI, you must manage the entire search marketing lifecycle, from Search-to-Sale. This includes finding and driving traffic to your website, as well as converting the visitor by persuading them to take the desired action. To improve your search marketing campaign ROI, you need to extend your campaign to include a systematic program to improve conversion through to the completion of sale.

Dale Hursh is CEO of SmartSearch Marketing. Read full bio.