So we’re officially in a recession now (according to official government figures via the BBC) with no sign of things getting better anytime soon. Marketing budgets are being slashed by many and redundancies are spreading like wildfire. So, if you want to either make the most of your marketing budget, or if you’re in marketing and you want to hold onto your job, where should you be putting your money in online?
It’s pretty simple to be honest, just keep spending but make sure it’s working for you!
Something I’ve been doing for many years is capping all my online marketing spend through the use of a CPA (cost per acquisition) limit. Work out what you can afford to spend per sale/referral/lead and still make a profit, optimise your use of the various marketing channels available to keep your cost per acquisition under the limit, and then keep spending!
Hard to justify in the current climate? Just build a business model to show your boss (or yourself) which demonstrates the returns available by keeping spend tied to a CPA.
This is one of my bugbears, especially with regards to PPC (paid search). If it’s working for you, your campaigns are optimised continuously, and you’re coming in under your CPA, then why not throw more money at the campaign? Yes, you have to be diligent to ensure that your CPA limits are adhered to, but once you have it embedded as a process in your organisation it’s not that difficult to grow your spend and as a result your return.
So where should the marketing spend go (in online)? Well, into channels which are measurable and where you can track the returns. Paid search, affiliate marketing, banners (yes, you can work to a CPA if you use the right tools), social media campaigns, viral and of course natural search (search engine optimisation). Of course SEO deserves a different CPA to other channels as it’s naturally cheaper to do as long as you stick to the principles and don’t get sold by an agency looking to charge you the earth for something that costs nothing but common sense.
ComScore explains Google’s drop in click-through rate
March 1, 2008
ComScore have come out to explain a little more detail behind the release from a few days ago which announced the decline in clicks on Google’s paid search ads.
It seems that the reason for the decline in clicks is down to improvements made by Google to increase the click quality (such as only making text clickable instead of the entire ad unit).
One has to wonder whether a letter from Google has triggered this deeper analysis of the issue…
Anyway, with the recent news that click fraud is rising rapidly it’s timely for Google to remind us of these improvements. It will be telling to see the Click Forensics data for the 1st quarter 2008.
Search marketing slaying seasonality in travel
February 26, 2008
Interesting take on the role of search marketing in travel here from Elisabeth Osmeloski of Search Engine Watch.
Not completely sure I agree that seasonality will disappear, there will surely always be a place for targeting specific seasonal activities and travel times with certain keywords. Yes you may run the campaign full time but it’s usually a good idea to ramp it up in the appropriate seasons.
Google losing some favour?
February 26, 2008
ComScore have released some data showing that clicks on ads on Google were down 7% in January compared to December and flat year-on-year (actually down 12% qtr-on-qtr).
This is pretty astounding news after the growth Google has seen in ad clicks over the last few years. The thought is that this isn’t anything fundamentally to do with Google or any competitor taking market share away, rather analysts seem to think this is a sign of the economic uncertainty we are currently seeing. Times are hard so people click less on ads….
What would be interesting is to see the search volume data alongside this click data to see whether searches have declined or stayed the same.
Needless to say Google’s shares have taken a bit of a battering today because of this.
Paid search in travel 2006/2007
February 16, 2008
Now I’ve just been proved totally wrong. I wrote a while ago that paid search budgets may actually start decreasing (slightly) or stagnating by the end of 2007 in travel as marketers got their heads around affiliates, other new behavioral ways of marketing online and moved back to seeing the huge value in SEO. Also a backlash against paying per click has been expected for some time as marketers try to get everything measurable on a CPA basis.
Seems that’s not the case though. Robin Goad of Hitwise has a post which talks about some paid and organic search trends in travel and shopping sites through 2007. One really interesting chart shows that the Hitwise Shopping & Classifieds categories paid search activity actually decreased in 2007 compared to 2006. Travel on the other hand grew by 15-20% during the final three months of the year.
Also, there a great chart showing the trend for paid search traffic to the two categories from late 2006 to the end of 2007.
Interesting dip around July 2007 there. Anyone hazard a guess at what that may be? I know it’s not the busiest month of the year but that’s a hefty drop in paid search spend.
Click fraud rising
February 7, 2008
Click Forensics has reported on the 4th quarter of 2007′s click fraud volumes. They’ve seen an increase of 2.4% year on year with the latest quarter registering a massive 16.6% fraudulent clicks. That’s the overall figure for the industry average according to their index. The figure for content networks such as Google Adsense sits at 28.3% which is huge!
This is really worrying for anyone with a large paid search campaign. I would have expected these figures to drop due to technological advances from the search engines platforms, instead they seem to be climbing.
Demographically targeted Adwords
January 26, 2008
Google has announced the launch of demographic targeting for Adwords. This will enable you to show your paid search adverts to more targeted customers and thus drive better qualified traffic to your site. Very useful!
This involves site owners sending Google anonymised user data so that Google can then track these people and serve targeted ads. Surely this has to raise questions for data protection? That said, it is immensely useful to any retailer with data on their visitors!
Search continues to lead the way in online marketing
January 14, 2008
Paid search (according to Marketing Charts) contributed 57.1% of the total spend on online marketing in the UK. The spend was up 44% year on year for the first six months of 2007 compared with 2006.
This just shows how effective it is and where your marketing pounds should be aimed.
Classifieds has shown good growth as well but this is not as targeted so it’s obviously not going to get the same amount of interest as search for the moment.
Reasons for using search are cited to be lead generation, driving direct sales and traffic generation. Great to see sales being the equal top reason for using search. For too long it’s been seen as a way to drive traffic and acquire leads, when actually it is the most effective way to drive a direct sale available to online marketers.
Some good tips for travel PPC
October 31, 2007
Tripadvisor have released their figures from a survey called their Traveller Trends Survey. Out of the survey comes some predicitions for 2008 trends that we should all expect to see.
One of the aspects of this (the link above has much more detail) is the TripAdvisor TravelCast. It’s a barometer of what’s hot in travel destinations. TripAdvisor engineers have developed a proprietary algorithm that looks at several criteria, including changes in search activity and postings throughout the TripAdvisor site. The TravelCast then predicts the rising stars in travel.
The destinations that are showing as increasing in popularity and expected to be the biggest next year are:
TripAdvisor TravelCast Top Ten World Destinations for 2008
1. Jerba, Tunisia
2. Makandi Bay, Egypt
3. Phangnga, Thailand
4. Kovalam, India
5. Sabaudia, Italy
6. Asilah, Morocco
7. Ko Phangan, Thailand
8. La Plagne, France
9. Yangshuo, China
10. Kotor, Montenegro
TripAdvisor TravelCast Top Ten U.S. Destinations for 2008
1. Sunny Isles Beach, Florida
2. Kitty Hawk (Outer Banks), North Carolina
3. Seward, Alaska
4. Kailua, Hawaii
5. Blue Ridge, Georgia
6. Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania
7. San Marcos, Texas
8. Paso Robles, California
9. Rockport, Texas
10. Copper Mountain, Colorado
Now, this is great insight for online (and offline) travel providers who bid on keywords on search engines. If you are active in pay per click and these destinations match some of your offerings then you should seriously consider looking at the data (clickthroughs, bid positions, bid amounts etc) to see if you can do anything else to get more clicks on these terms. If they are going to be so hot next year it may be worth diverting some of your paid search budget into these destinations over those that don’t perform for you currently. Insight like this is highly valuable, especially when it comes from such a big community as TripAdvisor.
Click fraud in paid search is rising
October 24, 2007
Click fraud, the bane of every marketer who deals with paid search, is currently sitting at around 16% of the clicks you may be receiving. The average rate is 16.2% and can be significantly higher on content networks.
The average rate was 13.8% a year ago and 15.8% last quarter so it is rising quite fast:
The average rate of click fraud on content networks such as Google Adsense or Yahoo Publisher Network has risen more sharply:
The graphic below shows a threat map for where click fraud can be generated:
So why this continuing rise? Well as it’s coming from content networks I can only guess that it may be being generated by rogue publishers and bloggers who are auto-generating extra clicks on their sites in order to raise their income. This kind of practice could really be affecting your bottom line and giving you a falsely inflated CPA (cost per acquisition) on your paid search campaigns.
Well worth keeping an eye on! And if, like me, you have a large campaign under your remit then contact your agency asap to check that you are receiving any rebates the search engines such as Google provide.
Thanks to Marketing Vox.
