In case you missed it, you can watch it on-demand or go through the slide deck at your own pace.

Mike’s tips from the webinar include:
Tip 1: CIOs and CMOs don’t always get it
Tip 2: Stick to the value, not the tactics
Tip 3: Be specific about the goals
Tip 4: Be ready to answer hard questions
Tip 5: Never Stop Selling

Jennifer provided some great questions and answers, framing them in a way that a lot of marketers can relate to.

• Question #1 from Execs: SEM/SEO, what is it? What they really want to know: Will this help me get new customers?
• Question/Statement #2 from Execs: I searched for “water” and we didn’t show up. What they really want to know: Why am I paying for this if my friends can’t see it?
• Question #3 from Execs: Why aren’t we doing video/social media/email? What they really want to know: What cool things can I show my friends we’re doing?

You can sum it up as Educate, Show Improvements, Show ROI, Stay the Course, and…Educate. For the whole story, watch the webinar now.

• Recognizing a need for information
• Accepting the challenge to take action to fulfill the need
• Formulating the problem
• Expressing the information need in a search system
• Examination of the results
• Reformulation of the problem and its expression, and
• Use of the results

(Marchionini and White in Hearst, 2009)

An interesting criticism of this model came out last year in a paper by Max Wilson called “The Tetris Model of the Information Seeking Process”. The standard information seeking model sees users as formulating their queries, viewing their results, and reformulated their query ad infinitum as needed in a circular process until they reach their desired result. Wilson argues that the stages of information seeking don’t necessarily occur in a linear process but can be better visualized as a Tetris layout where information must be fitted together to reach a goal. In this model, progression, time, and movement between the different stages of information seeking are tracked independently. This model visualizes the quality and complexity of information through the depth of a Tetris block:

While Wilson relates the increasing speed of the Tetris game to the deadlines and time constraints that people face when searching, I see it as also representing the rate which users become familiar and proficient with the search interface. A game that doesn’t speed up could be seen as a metaphor for usability problems. While the model doesn’t assist with aspects of the information seeking process such as query formulation, it does provide new and novel way to visualize how we piece the information of multiple search results together to find an ultimate result.

Plan to Measure; then Measure the Plan

As you move forward with your PPC campaign, ensure you are able to effectively measure your KPIs through your analytics tracking. With several of our clients, we are using keyword-level ROI to ensure we can accurately spend the budget where we are making the highest returns. This measurement includes being able to merge data from several sources in order to accurately measure the effect of each keyword on the business.

B2B sales in the online environment are really no different than in the offline environment: The sales process is much longer than in B2C, and relationship development is a primary concern. Knowing this fact, it is important to ensure your analytics are set to measure the multitude of conversions that may occur and assign ROI values to each conversion.

Tip: Ensure your cookie duration is enabled to match the average sales cycle timeline at a minimum.

K.I.S.S Rule Applied to Conversion Path Optimization

Once you have a set of clearly defined goals and are able to effectively measure the necessary KPIs, it’s time to turn to the conversion path. The traditional thought is that the path to conversion starts on the landing page, when, in fact, it starts with the moment the user interacts with your ad on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

All of the tactics you use (including ad copy, targeting, landing page messaging and the subsequent site conversion path) must be dictated by the end goal. Every interaction or step in the conversion process should take the user in one continuous motion towards the intended conversion. Messaging and offers should maintain a consistent theme to gain the conversion and nurture the lead into a prospect for the sales department. The conversion path should provide all of the information the user needs along the way to make the decision whether to purchase or not.

Enquiro’s own research on B2B purchase decision behavior provides valuable insight as to what content to place on your site and in your conversion path. Ensure that traffic, once on the site, can convert on landing pages quickly and easily. Ask yourself several questions:

1. Is the conversion path simple and intuitive?
2. What is the intention of the users on this page?
3. What information are they looking for (pricing, competitive comparisons, product specs, company information)?
4. What goal do you want users to complete?
5. Are there any distractions or unnecessary information on the pages in the conversion funnel?
6. Are your calls-to-action conspicuously positioned?
7. Is your offer (whitepapers, podcasts, eBooks, demos, complimentary trials, etc.) relevant to users’ needs?

 Please check back next week for PPC Best Practices – Part 3 of this Series.

Stop Thinking PPC, Start Thinking Consumer-Initiated Marketing

Over the past year, several new options (and the list keeps growing) have been made available for online advertisers to create more sophisticated online marketing campaigns. We’ve seen the implementation of display advertising through Pay Per Click (PPC) providers as well as a significant movement towards local and mobile advertising. This movement in the market represents a paradigm shift, from simply a PPC-focused strategy, to thinking about all the channels associated with consumer-initiated marketing conversations.

Several of these options include display advertisements, paid inclusion, local listings and Pay Per Action (PPA). With each of these options there are several different revenue models (and by revenue, I mean for the search engines). Therefore, it is important to ensure you have effectively allocated your budget to maintain your ROI (Return On Investment).

PPC and PPA models are the most effective for the advertiser based on the business objectives of driving users to the site and gaining conversions, whereas a CPM-based model is more effective from a branding perspective.

With each of these models it is extremely important to know what your end goal is and how to reverse-calculate to estimate what each conversion is worth, and through your conversion rate what each visitor is worth to you and consequently how much you should be paying per thousand impressions. Sadly enough, too many advertisers initiate PPC campaigns without knowing what the end goal is. A word of caution: Traffic is not an end goal!

Start with the End in Mind

What is it that your PPC campaign needs to do for the business objectives? What Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) do you have in place for the measurement of the plan? There are many metrics to measure the effectiveness of a PPC campaign versus the effectiveness of your optimization. What’s the difference? PPC campaign effectiveness is judged by its impact on the company’s bottom line, and the return on investment. Campaign optimization is measured by an increase in CTR and improved quality score.

The goals of your PPC campaign should be those conversions that speak directly to the business objectives and business model of the company. When you begin to optimize your campaigns, it will become clear how measuring the effect of the PPC campaign on the business objectives, not performance metrics, is critical to improving ROI.

Next up, I’ll dive deeper into the PPC process in PPC Best Practices Part 2 of this 4 part series.