Datalicious Blog - Data Driven Marketing
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Eyeblaster research: Share of display and search conversions by vertical

The debate around whether display influences search behaviour or not has been going on for a while but I don't think anyone really doubts the impact on search anymore, the question is how much. So it's nice to see some research on how this differs by vertical. The below Eyeblaster graph shows the share of search and display conversions by vertical

Interesting to see would be how the impact of display on search behaviour differs depending on the brand awareness in market for a particular brand. Datalicious client research indicates that the weaker the brand awareness in market for a particular brand, the stronger the impact of display advertising on search behaviour and conversions.

Request the full Eyeblaster report here

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Filed under  //   ads   branding   christian bartens   display   eyeblaster   research   search   sem  

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AdGooroo search advertising report: Bing fails to translate traffic to increased share of advertisers

The guys at AdGooroo have published another one of their search advertising reports which contains some really interesting data. 

Especially the share of advertisers by search engine and most expensive keywords reports are worth having a closer look. They show a constant decline in advertiser market share for Bing after an initial spike as well as significant differences in keywords by search engine hinting at different user segments.

Apart from the above the report also contains the following.
  • Monthly Change in First Page Advertisers
  • Avg # Ads/Keyword (US & International)
  • Avg # Ads/Keyword (US only)
  • 2009 Retailer Search Spending (Top 80 retailers, Google US)
  • Top 25 US Advertisers by Search Engine
Download the full report here.
http://succeed.adgooroo.com/Q409_Search_Advertising_Report.html


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Filed under  //   adgooroo   advertising   christian bartens   market   paid search   report   search   sem   share   spend   trends  

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Case study: Making Vodafone datalicious using SiteCatalyst, Test&Target and SearchCenter

All right, we've been posting for a while now and hope you like our view of the data world out there but now it's time for a little self-promotion (nevertheless interesting we think). 

Have a look at the below case study outlining the Omniture implementation we did for Vodafone Australia over the past few months (we're rather proud of it) and how it enabled the company to extract some serious ROI from its web analytics platform.

“I’ve been working with SiteCatalyst for over six years, 3 years as a customer and 3 years as an employee, consulting to some of our largest customers around the world. The current Vodafone implementation of SiteCatalyst is one of the most impressive I have seen and ranks in the top 10 from my perspective. It is an amazing foundation for taking action on the data and improving online return on investment.” Adam Greco, Team Lead Business Consulting at Omniture.

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Filed under  //   case studies   christian bartens   clients   implementation   news   omniture   optimization   roi   search   sem   seo   services   sitecatalyst   test&target   testing   vodafone   web analytics  

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Oye Modern: Effective search strategy backed by powerful analytics

Background on Oye Modern

Oye Modern is a specialist online retailer of unique jewellery, stocking a range of designer pieces from DJ turntable rings with real vinyl, to sterling silver necklaces styled as crisp pencil shavings. Traditionally the site generated the majority of it’s business via online word of mouth from blogs, social media, and other online communities recommending her products. There was also a limited paid search program that was failing to deliver cost effective conversions and needed some love.

http://www.oyemodern.com/

Challenge for Datalicious

With a budget of $5,000, Oye Modern wanted to ramp up sales and visibility to capitalise on the pre-Christmas period. Datalicious was engaged to stretch this limited budget as far as possible, leading us to think outside the box and employing analytics to show return on investment.

The solution

With such a small budget, traditional media channels were ruled out quickly and Datalicious looked at how we can use proven tactics within low and zero cost environments such as organic search, social media and complimentary sites, together with tactics to optimise the website experience and messaging to achieve Oye Modern’s objectives.

Implementation recommendations

Partner with website Daily Addict which has a small but affluent following in Sydney with a good social-demographic match to customers that had previously purchased. The partnership involved Daily Addict producing video editorial featuring jewellery tips from Oye Modern, and was distributed via social media and emails to followers.

Optimisations to the site for organic search by creating additional pages, improving internal linking and simple changes to site copy.
Add several proven conversion optimisations to the website such as free shipping, a gift guide and improved messaging about delivery and returns.

A small paid search campaign in higher converting countries targeting product related keywords. This campaign was designed to generate learnings and continue to run as a profit centre after the Christmas campaign finished.

The Oye Modern team, together with our Datalicious planner Leila Hassan, executed all of the recommendations brilliantly and quickly within budget (excluding labour by their internal team) and put Oye Modern in the best possible position to capitalise on the Christmas gift giving frenzy.

The results

All marketing efforts combined produced a sales increase of over 400% from the normal baseline sales results of which at least 30% could be directly attributed to paid search managed by Datalicious.

Organic search increased 100% with almost twice the volume of visitors compared to the pre-campaign baseline - with many top 3 rankings for product terms, particularly the top selling products and names of designers.

Searches for “oye modern” (branded searches) increased significantly, together with a much higher conversion rate - it was great to see how the other activity produced an uplift in branded search.

The Daily Addict editorial was well received, generating several YouTube honours for being one of the top viewed in it’s category during the campaign, together with positive anecdotal feedback via email and social media comments.

With this campaign behind us now, we look forward to looking at new and interesting ways to continue to increase sales for Oye Modern, and allow Jeni the founder to leave her day job and put all her focus towards selling this wonderful and original jewellery to the world.  

"The SEM campaign that Datalicious put in place significantly increased our sales over the Christmas period and also introduced us to new markets we hadn't actively pursued before. The Datalicious team are smart, fun and an enjoyable bunch of people to work with." Jennie Oye, Director.

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Filed under  //   christian bartens   clients   google analytics   jewelry   oye modern   paid   search   sem   seo   web analytics  

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Useful filters to search faster

A little while back, Google discretely introduced a “Show Options” tab that lets you filter your results by media, time or in other interesting ways. Filters are not new, but combined with Google’s awesome search, have become quite useful to me.

Filtering by Visited Pages. Google is being used more and more as a navigational device towards content you already know. Google is good, but if you’re deep in research sometimes it’s hard to find that site again, and this is a brilliant tool for this purpose. 

This behaviour is not uncommon, and an interesting trend I don’t feel is getting enough attention. Search has become less and less about discovery, and more about meeting basic usability requirements about finding existing content... Something search marketers are adjusting for. How often do you already know exactly what content you are looking for before you search? What chance do the other sites have of capturing your click for that impression? if you’re a search marketer, how do you adjust your optimisation metrics to cater for navigational search and usability from something traditionally focused on acquisition?

Here is my search for Domain names. I searched for this last week and couldn’t remember the name of the site which I decided was the way to go. 

Another feature in the options is the wonder wheel – we haven’t seen a lot of people using this from our analytics data, and I am thinking it probably would be more useful for internal search where you have a more defined content set. There are some implications for search, and with adoption will come more users entering your site via more specific keywords and the reduction in broad search terms.

We’ll be interested to see adoption rates of these filters  and any considerations for search marketing – we’re monitoring our logs and see about 5% of visits contain at least 1 filter, and will be looking to use this data in the future to enrich insights around keywords and what users are looking for when they use them.

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Filed under  //   filters   google   search   sem   seo   usability  

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Google Trends: Determine product lifecycle stage using search term volume

All marketers would have seen the below graph before and understand how the theory behind it impacts their marketing campaigns but most might wonder in which phase certain products actually are. Some might know for their own products based on sales numbers but these might not be that easy to come by in large organisations and when it comes to competitor products the guesswork really starts.

So why not use search term trends provided by Google free of charge to establish what lifecycle stage a particular product is in? The search term volume over time shows the change in interest in the product pretty well. Check out the below search term trends for the most popular N-Series Nokia products and how closely each resembles the lifecycle curve vs. the iPhone.

The below graphs shows nicely how the interest in the respective Nokia product grows over time with adoption and then finally drops back down with new products being introduced. Overall sales numbers probably correlating quite nicely with search term volume.

Interesting is the trend for the iPhone. As you can see it doesn't follow the standard product lifecycle curve at all but so far manages to keep growing rather than declining which is a prime example for how you can keep products alive by introducing additional features and services. Just think about the iPhone integration with iTunes and the growing number of applications and you get the drift.

Read some more about the product lifecycle theory here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_life_cycle_management

Check out the original Nokia Google Trends data here
http://www.google.com/trends?q=n95%2C+n73%2C+n96%2C+n70%2C+n82&ctab=0&geo=all&geor=all&date=all&sort=0

Check out the original iPhone Google Trends data here
http://www.google.com/trends?q=iphone&ctab=0&geo=all&geor=all&date=all&sort=0

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Filed under  //   christian bartens   google   life   lifecycle   product   search   stage   terms   trends  

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Will Twitter be the death of RSS feeds?

It seems to me that more and more businesses now have corporate twitter accounts and given that most blog publishing platforms now have Twitter integrations, this has become the channel of choice to follow business news updates rather than RSS. The below Google Trends search term data doesn't prove that but at least supports the theory to some extend. Your thoughts?

Click on the below link to see the original Google Trends chart
http://www.google.com/trends?q=twitter%2C+rss&ctab=0&geo=au&geor=all&date=all&sort=0


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Filed under  //   christian bartens   google   rss   search   terms   trends   twitter  

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Google launches new special search engine designed to enhance user experience on retail sites

Google Commerce Search is a search solution designed to optimise the on-site search experience on retail sites but interestingly this product is not for free this time, pricing starts at $50,000 (pretty hefty for Google). 

Google has been offering on-site search services for a while now so this isn't an unexpected move but I'm surprised the pricing model is not the usual cost per click or cost per conversion. Please comment on this post if you know what the underlying platform is (is this another acquisition?).

Google Commerce Search offers the following features
  • Enable visitors to find the right products faster
  • Filter results by category, price, brand or other attributes
  • Provide user-friendly spelling options and synonyms
  • Increase website conversions and sales
  • Boost or promote chosen products within search results
  • Deploy search solution in days, and scale effortlessly
  • Customize, track, and optimize performance
Find out more on the official Google website here

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Filed under  //   christian bartens   ecommerce   google   google commerce search   internal   merchandising   on-site   optimisation   retail   search   shopping  

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Old News: Travelocity Offers Hope in Evolution of Display Advertising

Travelocity Offers Hope in Evolution of Display Advertising. Targeted Audience and Real-Time Campaign Updates Put Brand's Efficiency Ahead of the Industry Curve

An early sign of hope for the channel comes from Travelocity, whose best-performing online ad campaigns came after the No. 2 online travel agency sought to deliver customized messages based on its visitors' site search history.

Last year, the travel site dumped the old way of online display ads, such as serving up generic messages like "Find low fares on Travelocity. Book now." Its messages are now targeted in real-time based on visitors' most recent search activities.

Travelocity's targeted approach has yielded big improvements over its previous online campaigns; new campaigns require fewer ad impressions to convert site visitors to purchasers, driving Travelocity's cost-per-transaction down 79%. It also saw a 230% increase in bookings; click-through rates jumped 651%.

Wow, nice press release but unfortunately Vodafone was doing the same thing already two years ago with our help, I know we should have started writing our blog earlier. Back then we dynamically wrote Eyeblaster re-targeting tags into pages based on product pages visited, external search terms as well as internal site search terms which then allowed us to customize the display banner activity outside the Vodafone website. Drop us a line if you're interested in a similar solution to improve your media ROI. It's not rocket science, can be implemented quickly and only needs a bit of planning.

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Filed under  //   ads   behavior   christian bartens   display   search   search terms   targeting  

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GroupM: The Impact of Social Media on Search Behavior

Interesting but obvious GroupM Search, comScore and M80 research exploring the interplay of search marketing and social media (the next hype after the wave of research on display impact on search). People who hear about a brand or discuss it via social media are more likely to search for the brand (I guess we finally have to accept that no matter where people interact with brands they sooner or later want to check them out, i.e. search for their website).

Key findings include:

  • Consumers exposed to a brand’s influenced social media and paid search are 2.8x more likely to search for that brand’s products
  • There was a 50% CTR increase in paid search when consumers were exposed to both influenced social media and paid search
  • There was a 42-point lift in searcher penetration around brand product terms when consumers were exposed to both influenced social media and paid search compared to paid alone

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Filed under  //   christian bartens   groupm   impact   media   repoprts   research   search   sem   seo   social  

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