Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Paid Search as a Cross-Channel Optimization Tool
With the amount of money spent on traditional mass media campaigns, your online
endeavors might be more useful as a cross-channel optimization tool than as a revenue-
generating channel in its own right. you can achieve this by setting up a control group,
but a simpler approach is to establish a separate segment. you could use any type of
segment, such as a geographic segment. this setup is supported in most channels,
including paid search.
imagine that you have two full-page ad creatives for a specific product. you
can choose to run both of them in two segments (for example, two different geographic
regions). But before you do this, you must set up strict baselines on incoming traffic
and its quality. Once you have a baseline—which could be as simple as the number
of visitors and the average visit-to-sale conversion rate—you have created a powerful
method for measuring the differential effectiveness of the full-page advertisements.
Simply track the baseline periods for the control groups compared to the target
media markets. you can measure traffic impact, qualification impact, and impact
by visitor type.
While this type of web analytics tracking may not replace your traditional mass
media analysis, it does provide a number of benefits. this is an easy, and cost-effective
process.
to summarize, know your business and know your advertising mission all the
way down to having clear objectives for your paid search campaigns.
283
Getting Started with Paid Search Analysis
Before we get started, take action on the campaign tracking items recommended in
chapter 3. Without data, no analysis can be done. likewise, without a good under-
standing of report customization (see chapters 7 and 10), you will find it hard to do
good paid search optimization.
despite the amount of money spent on paid search marketing initiatives today,
it would not be fair to assume that someone within your organization is handling this.
Just because paid search initiatives might be run by the marketing department, you
cannot expect them to have a complete view of paid search's impact across all online
channels. Web analysts need to take charge and evaluate the behavior of online cus-
tomers acquired from paid search. Paid search is so expensive that providing insight
may mean the difference between a well-run program and a half-baked one. Paid
search visitors cannot be optimized on a separate channel; they must be optimized as
a part of a whole. these visitors have their own distinct behavioral patterns, and they
enter the site in unique and controlled places (landing pages) with well-defined key-
words and interests in mind.
