Search Marketing Standard » White Papers

Barriers On A Website

Aaron Forgue — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:49:18 +0000

Although a listing position or pay-per-click ad copy are crucial parts of any search engine marketing campaign, equally important is the website your visitors land on. At times, what seems like a logical design from the owner’s perspective creates unnecessary hurdles for a website visitor.

This white paper from Enquiro looks at different page elements and the instances where they can serve as barriers to a natural scanning of your website pages. From this report, you’ll learn:

How graphic elements get scanned by website visitors and how they alter a visitor’s behavior
How to prevent the introduction of multimedia elements from having a negative effect on your website conversions

From the website design perspective, graphics and multimedia elements often seem like an improvement. However, as this 9-page Enquiro study reveals, they can significantly disrupt natural web page scanning and negatively impact your bottom line.

For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.

Barriers On A Website

Mapping The BuyerSphere

Aaron Forgue — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:47:48 +0000

With so many factors influencing a buyer’s decisions online, it has often been assumed that buyers are rational actors who would weigh all the pros and cons before making a purchase. What many recent studies have shown, however, is that a buyer’s decision process is not necessarily rational.

Mapping the BuyerSphere, a white paper published by Enquiro, identifies what they call “the risk gap.” As Enquiro’s research shows, buyers are more risk-averse than rational, and there is a gap between the vendor’s rational image of the customer and the buyer’s attempt to minimize the risk. So how do you minimize your company’s “risk gap”? This report will show you:

How the purchasing decision is made, and what some of the factors are that go into a buyer’s risk-minimizing approach
How to implement risk-control mechanisms
How to gain an external perspective on your products, the market, and buyers

Marketing has always been about understanding your customers. In this 18-page report, Enquiro delivers some new and important perspectives on how your prospects might view and interact with your products/services.

For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.

Mapping The BuyerSphere

Integrated Persuasion: Online And Offline

Aaron Forgue — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:46:12 +0000

As many have noted, the Internet has become a natural extension of our daily life. As such, the distinction between online and offline is becoming less and less pronounced. We seamlessly move from a face-to-face conversation with a co-worker to using a search engine to research the subject matter just discussed and back to that offline conversation once again. Marketers have fallen behind their prospects in integrating online and offline interactions.

Online/offline integration is the subject matter of this white paper, published by Enquiro with the help of Google, Business.com, Marketo, Demandbase, and Covario. The white paper deals with the following issue areas:

Influencers in the B2B buying cycle
Best practices in integrating sales and marketing
Which areas of sales/marketing cooperation lend themselves to online interactions and which are more appropriate offline

Online/offline integration has become an important issue for many online marketing professionals over the last year or so, as they began to realize that searches and clicks do not exist in a vacuum. This 23-page white paper will help get you started on your own integration campaign and encourage the building of well-optimized and persuasive marketing campaigns.

For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.

Integrated Persuasion: Online And Offline

Maximizing Online: Leveraging Your Online Touch Points

Aaron Forgue — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:43:59 +0000

Any marketing strategy, whether it is B2C or B2B, boils down to the need to build trust and persuade a potential customer to make a purchase. The world of online marketing is no different. However, since search engines like Google have become the default means of navigating the web, it is crucial to understand user intent and behavior when it comes to search.

With this in mind, Enquiro, with the help of Google, Business.com, Marketo, Demandbase, and Covario, has published this white paper, intent on helping B2B companies leverage search in their marketing campaigns. Among other things, in this report you will learn:

How to differentiate between research terms and those that signal intent to purchase
Important differences between low-risk and high-risk purchasing behavior
Typical website scanning methods for different phases in the buying funnel
The differences between buyers and doers in your search engine marketing efforts

The research in this white paper comes from over 100 interviews, 2 surveys and multiple eye-tracking sessions conducted by Enquiro. With the immense complexity of web interactions, it is important for B2B marketers to understand why search engine users and their website visitors behave as they do. This 33-page report helps explain these complexities and will guide you in your quest to better ROI.

For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.

Maximizing Online: Leveraging Your Online Touch Points

9 Tips for Organizing Your PPC Campaigns

Walshkc — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:00:17 +0000

Although often presented as a clear and straightforward marketing environment, pay-per-click advertising is still a complex process. One of the more obvious difficulties one is faced with when managing a large PPC campaign is the need for clear organizational structure. Poorly organized accounts will almost certainly waste money while generating subpar-quality traffic to your website.

This report, produced by Lyris, Inc., outlines nine surefire strategies for organizing PPC campaigns on Google AdWords (although most apply to Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter as well). Some of the areas discussed include:

Understanding Google AdWords account structure.
Organizing search vs. content network campaigns.
Separating high volume and long tail keyword campaigns.
Managing ad groups.
Testing your campaigns.

Whether you are already running a sizeable campaign or just looking to create your first one, keeping your pay-per-click campaigns organized will ensure that you derive the most value from them. It will also save you headaches when managing your account, from broad campaigns and ad groups all the way down to individual keywords.

For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.

9 Tips for Organizing Your PPC Campaigns

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Search Engine Marketing

Walshkc — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:58:54 +0000

Online marketing campaigns offer unmatched opportunities for tracking, measurement, and nearly instantaneous tweaking. However, in order to take full advantage of these powerful features, you need to understand what to measure and to track. To put it in marketing jargon, you need to know your key performance indicators, or KPIs.

This white paper from Coremetrics will get you started on measuring the appropriate parameters and making the necessary changes to your online marketing campaigns. The report offers specific advice on a variety of questions, including:

What KPIs should you measure and how should you calculate them?
How much data is enough for a meaningful analysis?
How should you apply your findings to your campaigns?
How do you set a pay-per-click budget for new and existing products based on KPIs?

Knowing what to measure is key to a well-executed online marketing campaign. By including the key performance indicators discussed in this report that are part of your campaign, you should be well on your way to success.

For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Search Engine Marketing

Unlocking the B2B Web Analytics “Black Box”

Walshkc — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:57:47 +0000

The need to understand what triggers a particular sale is at the top of the list for any B2B company, large or small. Most web analytics solutions on the market today can only track the “last click,” meaning the last action that led to a sale. Very few smaller B2B companies track multiple points of influence on their marketing campaigns.

In this report, Business.com offers some findings from its recent survey of over 27,000 B2B websites assessing the use of advanced web analytics and how different analytics solutions lead to different campaign results. Some of the findings discussed include:

Different analytics solutions employed by B2B companies.
How different types of analytics software lead to different results.
Potential solutions to the B2B web analytics “black box.”

In many ways, today’s web analytics solutions are still in their infancy. Most still track the “last click” without regard for other influences that might have led to a sale. Thus, it is important to be on top of the latest advances in analytics software and approach your marketing campaigns from a more holistic perspective, taking into account that a sale is a process, not an event.

For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.

Unlocking the B2B Web Analytics “Black Box”

B2B Search Marketing Strategy Guide: Advice From the Pros

Walshkc — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:56:36 +0000

Search engine marketing has proven itself time and again as a reliable and profitable marketing channel. In terms of ROI and the control it offers to business of all sizes, search engine marketing stand in a category of its own.

In this report, Business.com offers some of the battle-tested B2B search marketing strategies collected via a survey of 144 search marketing agencies. The scope of this white paper encompasses both paid search advertising and search engine optimization. Some of the topics covered include:

Differences between B2C and B2B search marketing campaigns.
Paid search B2B strategies.
Best practices in B2B search engine optimization.

Businesses can only ignore search engine marketing at their peril. With the recent economic downturn, search engine marketing has proven to be the most cost-effective way for companies to advertise themselves online. Whether you are new to search marketing or running a number of SEO or PPC campaigns, this white paper will help you improve your ROI and get ahead of your competitors.

For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.

B2B Search Marketing Strategy Guide: Advice From the Pros

Improving Lead Quality in B2B Search Marketing

Walshkc — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:55:23 +0000

Long before the Internet, leads were a primary source of customers for business-to-business firms. The emergence of search engine marketing as a powerful marketing channel has brought new possibilities to the old lead generation game, but also new challenges. Online campaigns can quickly boost the value of leads, but they may also hurt their quality.

This white paper from Business.com deals with the issue of poor quality leads from B2B search engine marketing campaigns. The following issue areas are included in its scope:

Reasons behind poor-quality leads from B2B search engine marketing campaigns.
Short- and long-term fixes to improve the quality of your leads.

If your search marketing campaigns are generating low-quality leads, and you are puzzled about what to do, take a look at this report for a number of potential solutions. From ways to identify the problem to developing processes and initiatives that will increase lead quality before passing them along to Sales, effective solutions are possible.

For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.

Improving Lead Quality in B2B Search Marketing

Integrating Marketing and PR for SEO Success

Walshkc — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:52:32 +0000

It is unfortunate that so many businesses choose to keep their public relations and search engine marketing departments completely separate, especially since the growing influence and presence of search engines such as Google and Yahoo! translates into consumers turning to them for help locating information on the web. In addition, journalists increasingly rely on these properties and associated technologies to locate information and news on products and services.

This white paper from PRWeb suggests that it is time for public relations professionals and search marketers to work hand-in-hand to improve the visibility of their company’s products and services. The report covers the following areas:

What is SEO?
How-to tips for optimizing your press releases.
Lead conversion strategies for PR professionals.
How to get started.

A well-optimized press release is a powerful weapon in any arsenal. Whether it is your responsibility to optimize press releases or you are charged with fostering cooperation between the PR and search marketing departments at your organization, this white paper will help get you started.

For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.

Integrating Marketing and PR for SEO Success