Why aren't marketers effectively leveraging audience, ROI and site path analytics in every paid search campaign?
Analysts at Forrester, Jupiter and the like continue to tell us that paid search will be one of the main revenue and growth drivers for the foreseeable future. It certainly has helped fuel the online marketing turnaround and continues to post impressive numbers as a percentage of advertising spending.
The questions I have then are: Why, if paid search is such a business driver in our space, are search engine advertisers still attacking the marketplace with one arm tied behind their backs? Why are they not effectively leveraging audience, ROI and site path analytics in every paid search campaign?
Part of the answer certainly lies in a high-growth sector that is still developing, but I think there are other reasons as well. Regardless of where a marketer is in his search strategy, understanding and being able to analyze all aspects of search spending is critical for the business to continue to grow and be productive.
Missing the analytics boat
The stakes are enormous. Industry research indicates that a majority of search engine marketers either use no campaign success metrics, or simply reference clicks and traffic. They certainly know what they pay and what is sold, but the entire process of consumer path analysis, relative ROI measures that can be viewed across engines and campaigns, and understanding paid from unpaid search is not yet well organized. That's beginning to change.
I recently read an interview with the VP of advertising sales at one of the top search engines. He said that in the past year, the company has seen a growing number of sophisticated marketers arming themselves with enterprise-level technology solutions that track the profitability of virtually every paid search action that happens in their campaigns. These marketers are leveraging analytics to get a jump on their peers, particularly in categories where there is significant competition for inventory and where the margins are tight.
In the coming months and years, we're going to see the availability and utilization of in-depth analytics increasingly enable success among paid search marketers. I am glad to see that the engines themselves are sensitized to this as, like in all aspects of media, an informed buyer is the best customer you can have, if your product is superior.
Analytics have been a critical component of online marketing since the early days of ecommerce. From simple site traffic reporting to highly complex behavioral targeting, analytics are the foundation upon which all strategic marketing campaign planning is based. Yet, many search engine marketers still need to access the power and control that analytics can bring to their campaigns.
Effective analytics enable search marketers to generate greater revenue while decreasing campaign complexity, thus maximizing every marketing dollar spent and providing a greater return on that investment.
Choosing the right technology
Thanks to the growth of the online space and increasing demands by educated online consumers, search engine marketing has become a truly challenging proposition: thousands of keywords, multiple search engines, demands for real-time reporting and seamless campaign management. All of this contributes to an increasing complexity that often distracts marketers from addressing the core issue -- is my campaign as effective as it could be? Today, technology solutions exist that can help marketers cut through that complexity and determine effectiveness and ROI on a minute-by-minute basis.
When considering search engine analytics technologies, marketers must determine whether a given solution provides answers to six business-critical questions:
- Which keywords offer the best overall ROI?
- Which search engines provide the most traffic?
- Which search engines drive the most sales?
- Where does drop-off occur as prospects move from search to sale?
- What is my return on advertising spend?
- Where should I concentrate my marketing budget?
A robust search engine analytics technology will enable marketers to architect multi-engine campaigns, link sales data with particular keywords and phrases, and generate performance metrics that detail traffic from specific search engines throughout the sales cycle -- from customer prospecting to final sale. Being able to simultaneously and seamlessly stitch together those metrics from multiple search engines will provide marketers a holistic view of their search engine initiatives, enabling on-the-fly adjustments to the keyword and engine selection and a better basis from which to plan future campaigns.
As I said in my last article, the ability to do all of this has to be viewed in the context of increasing effectiveness and efficiency. These tools have to be easy to use, comprehensive and allow for critical data to be easily seen and acted upon.
Staying ahead of the curve
The pace of change and innovation in online advertising is largely unprecedented. It's matched only by the rate at which sophistication is spreading among online consumers. Marketers must keep pace with change, and the only sure way to do that is to understand your audience.
For the search engine marketer, finding and leveraging an effective, in-depth analytics solution will likely spell the difference between staying ahead of the curve and being trampled by the competition.
David Hills is president -- media solutions at 24/7 Real Media