A Good List of 2009 SEM Predictions

by Stuart Watson on December 23, 2008 · 3 comments

in Interactive Marketing,Landing Page Optimization,Search Engine Marketing

Find Resolution has a good list of 2009 search engine marketing predictions.  Having worked at Performics before Doubleclick bought us, some of these predictions would have seemed far fetch and unlikely. I do believe bid management is becoming commoditized and became apparent when Yahoo changed their model.  Trying to out-math the Google engine is just not going to happen.

#8 – Focus on post-click activity.  You mean it has not already been an emphasis?  There are so many variables involved in getting the person to click on a PPC ad why put up a generic landing page.  OnDialog provides platform for marketers’ to create their own landing pages without technology help.  Google has their Google Website Optimizer but does not provide a tool to build the HTML pages themselves.  On the high end is Omniture’s Test&Target which I’ve used for numerous clients in different industries.  Post-click activity will be an emphasis for any acquisition marketing media but take it a step further.

If you do re-marketing, why are you putting everyone into the same re-marketing bucket?  Think about it.  A customer visits the site coming in on the search term relative to the highest margin product you sell.  Don’t you want to prioritize that customer for re-marketing if they don’t convert?  There are many things to consider and are there tools to help make this possible.  Nothing cut and dry but doable none the less.

In 2009, yes focus on the post-click activity and make sure to consider how to prioritize clickers for re-marketing.  For both acquisition and retention programs.

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  • http://www.peddlersson.com Jill Howard Allen

    Good start Stuart! I have been using Google Analytics (Yes, I know I sold my soul because it’s free) and felt the same way about their Optimizer. It was like leading you to water, but not letting you drink.

    Thoughts on tools or ways to prioritize customers post click or is that in the next post?

  • http://www.ondialog.com Mark Blanton

    Stuart,

    Great observations.

    As marketers reduce their spends in other mediums and SEM becomes more competitive, deciding how best to handle leads and re-market to them will be the question to answer.

    How you handle this all depends on what tools you have available to you. What are the capabilities of your CRM, ESP etc.

    Next year I plan to have SEM campaign respondents elect themselves to a persistent email campaign based upon their from submissions on the landing page. An example would be, if someone reached my ad group on Personalized URLs (PURLS) they could tell me how they would deliver their PURLs. If they tell me they are delivering them via Direct Mail, I may elect them to my direct mail and Digital Variable Printing email campaign. If they tell me they will deliver them by Email, then that will elect them to my weekly newsletter on email marketing best practices.

    I can do this fairly easily by using my landing page solution and my CRM and ESP together.

    • http://www.ambleconnect.com Stuart Watson

      Mark,

      Thanks for the good ideas related to personalized options for content delivery. The search term can also identify the Customers objective/priority for coming to the site. I’ll post some more on how to develop strategies for using Customers actions (search, clicks, time-spent, form submissions) to prioritize display (and/or email) re-marketing programs.

      Happy New Year.

      Stuart

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