Search Strategies for the Holidays
Sourced from imediaconnection.com
The holiday season is just around the corner and Santa’s elves are already hard at work fulfilling wish lists in preparation for Santa’s big night. If you are an online marketer these days, I bet your job feels a bit like one of Santa’s elves or at least it should! The fourth quarter is by far the most important for a majority of advertisers. The question is: How can you make sure that you maximize your online sales this holiday season? One way to guarantee success is to make sure your paid search strategy is laser focused.
Collateral Damage: “Banners, a weapon that misses its target 99.75% of the time”
Written by Jon Ostler – founder of First Rate
Would you use a weapon that fails to hits its target 99.75% of the time? If you are using banner ads to generate traffic then this is exactly what you are doing. The average click trough rate for banners tracked by DoubleClick is now <0.25% so you will get only 2.5 clicks for every 1,000 banners displayed (CPM).
This article is not an attack on the use of banner ads, but rather a review of the good, the bad, and the ugly methods being used by online advertisers in an attempt to generate traffic from banners (or blood from a stone).
We Couldn’t Have Said It Better Ourselves
Sourced From searchengineguide.com
Although the word “holistic” is often used to describe a particular approach to medicine (in which the emphasis is on treatment of the “whole” individual), it is also appropriate to apply it to other disciplines, including Search Engine Marketing (SEM). There are three major components of SEM (and many minor ones, but we won’t touch on them here). These three primary parts are often used individually to great effect- but it is only when they are effectively used in unison that the “whole” can become “greater than the sum of its parts”. These major components are as follows:
“Cheap” and “Free” Keywords: Not Always a Longterm Bargain
Source: Clickz
There’s no loyalty from shoppers who buy only from the lowest-price provider. The moment a competitor lowers its price below yours, the customer leaves. There’s such cost and effort associated with acquiring customers that in many service industries, customers only become profitable in the relationship’s second or third year.
Payment Choices Lead to More Sales Online
Source: emarketer.com
According to a recent report from CyberSource (a major online payment supplier), the more payment methods offered by e-commerce Web sites in North America, the higher the sales conversion. Specifically, they found e-commerce Web sites offering four or more payment methods get, on average, sales conversion rates of 72%. Web sites offering three payment methods receive conversion rates of 71% — 20% higher than those Web sites offering just one payment method.