Screen snap of a website bidding on the term atomic wedgie... ooooh look, they are on sale! ...........................................................................

In the case above, I was looking for a funny image of, well, an atomic wedgie, and happened to catch this ad at the top of the paid search results. Being the curious type, I wondered what a 42% savings on atomic wedgies might look like, so I clicked the ad. Really, who DOESN’T want to save 42% on their atomic wedgies?

A basic example of sloppy keyword insertion; someone isn’t paying attention to their buys and doesn’t have a defined flow for handling these types of errors where the user is presented with alternatives or invited to explore more. Instead, this advertiser paid money to drive traffic resulting in no sale, no engagement, and in my case one more factor in their undoubtedly crazy bounce rate. Let’s also consider that the next time I see this advertiser’s name in any search (paid or organic) I will most likely dismiss it completely.

Keyword insertion is a terrific technique for Adwords campaigns that can dynamically place searchers’ keywords inside your ads to make them more attractive. Just make sure that the keywords you’re targeting are clear and driving traffic to real products and you have a defined flow that takes care of a searcher when you’ve made a mistake. Otherwise, it could cost you more than a few wasted 5¢ clicks.

If you’re new to the idea of keyword insertion with Google Adwords, there is good basic what-when-and-how material in the Adwords tutorials.

And if you were looking for some atomic wedgie photos or videos, this is for you:

In this case, the idea is that the more people who have this fax number for you, the more likely you are to keep paying for it.
eFax simply took the time to tell trialers what behavior they desired.

Could something as slap-me-on-the-forehead simple work for your business?

It works for Sean at PsychoTactics – he asks for referrals and testimonials
It works for Chuck Green – he asks for folks to buy from his design store to support his free newsletters

Food for thought.

STEP ONE: THE EMAIL
This is a screen capture of an email I received this week from marketing maven and domestic diva Martha Stewart featuring sponsored content from Motrin called Flex Your Family Muscle At Home. (That name we can talk about later, but yuck-o-la!)

While a regular visitor to MarthaStewart.com, I had not come across this content and was not familiar with the campaign. The invitation to ‘tell us what you think” piqued my interest, but alas there was no clear way to get to the content from the email.

The shaded areas were dead zones.
The one clear call to action was a live area: Take the Survey
(Only after running through this entire scenario did I discover that the title was also a live link to the content.)

So far, we have an awkwardly executed email campaign.
1. It’s supposed to be about fun, family oriented content but visually looks like a medicine ad
2. The Martha Stewart logo doesn’t link back to the site or to the sponsored content
3. I’ve not interacted with this content, yet Martha and Motrin are spending their one chance to grab my email attention betting that I have done so and asking for my opinion.
4. The call to action is take the survey, but am I really the right target?

How could we have improved this email?
1. Make the email about the content, visually down play the product visuals
2. Create two user paths clearly called out: one for browsing content and one for sharing opinion

STEP TWO: THE SURVEY

Question #1 and I’m already lost… “YOU invited me via email, people. Why isn’t email a choice?”
Surely, when they crafted this entire campaign they knew they were going to reach out to folks via email. Not detrimental, just sloppy.

I browse through more of the questions and it becomes clear to me that this survey should have had a set of qualifying questions before the survey started. The first three questions are content-specific, and I’ve not read the content yet.

The questions in the survey are rather poor.
For example, number 7…
Which activities best fit with the Children’s Motrin IB brand?
* crafts
* gardening
* cooking/baking
* home improvement/decorating
* household chores
* none of the above

The entire survey seems geared toward brand damage control rather than truly gaining consumer insight. A PDF (224k) of the survey is available here.

I complete the survey, and (finally!) I am directed to the content:

STEP THREE: THE CONTENT
A full-sized screen snap of this page is available here.

On first impression, this microsite is poorly designed, hard to read and dare I say BORING. It completely lacks the sense of style and craftsmanship of Martha.

This project is supposed to be #4 in a series, but there is no sign of the other content above the fold, so I go exploring.

The first link I find is the survey link, and I’ve just come from there.
The second link set I find is for some Martha Stewart content that seems unrelated to the Family Muscle series.

The third set of links are for some online video clips, and given that today is May 20th and the video was from Valentine’s Day I did not find it to be overly helpful.

Finally… the fourth set of links a whopping 827 pixels down the screen hold the navigation I was looking for. (See the green square above).

Keep in mind that the average user isn’t going to treasure hunt the way I did. They would have given up much sooner. So while Motrin probably paid big bucks to sponsor this Martha content, they probably aren’t getting full value from that spend.

Bottom line… Thumbs down for both teams who are smart enough and experienced enough to know better.
The design and execution were amateur and sloppy, with no regard for the user experience.

I don’t have a regular relationship with this brand.
In fact, I cannot recall the last time I even used one of their products.

I don’t receive other communication from them on a regular basis.
Just these once a year bits of weirdness.

But let’s pretend for a moment that I did regularly use their hair coloring products.
Do I really want to be reminded on my birthday that I need to cover my greys which are inevitably growing with age?

Not this gal.

Who is linking to your competitor’s site, but not to yours?
http://www.linktree.info/

What is the overall visibility measure for your site?
http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/

Want all the gory details on a URL?
http://www.faganfinder.com/urlinfo/

Consumers are actively shopping in store, online and catalog channels. Store shoppers also purchase 16 percent of their items online and 5 percent from catalogues. Online shoppers buy 43 percent of their merchandise in stores and 6 percent from catalogues. Catalogue shoppers buy 19 percent of their goods in stores and 11 percent online.
Source: DoubleClick

ONLINE ADVERTISING THAT FOCUSES LOCALLY MAPS TO THAT TREND
Spending on local online advertising reached $2.7 billion in 2004, up 28 percent from 2003. That figure is expected to grow 46 percent in 2005 to $3.9 billion.
Source: Borrell Associates

YOUR RETURNING VISITOR VS NEW VISITOR DATA IS PROBABLY NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT IS
Nearly 58 percent of online users delete cookies and as many as 39 percent delete them on a monthly basis. More than one-third (38 percent) say they believe that cookies put their browsing security and privacy at risk.
Source: Jupiter Research

NARROWLY FOCUSED SEARCH PHRASES CONVERT BETTER
Keyword search phrases with four words are the most effective at converting browsers into customers. Four-word phrases for keywords in the top 100 group of words that produced the highest traffic rates converted 38.28 percent of unique visitors into customers in December 2004. Three-word phrases converted 21.89 percent of unique visitors into customers. The conversion rate for five-word phrases takes a considerable dip to 9.69 percent.
Source: Oneupweb

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): How to speak SEO Geek
http://www.sempo.org/glossary.php

How Google Works:
When you understand the inner workings, it starts to make more sense
http://www.googleguide.com/google_works.html

Cost-Per-Click (CPC) ads on Google and Overture are nothing new, but perhaps thinking about them in terms of cost per acquisition rather than per click is new to you. To review, CPC works like this:

• You find a keyword that will bring you traffic.
• You bid on that keyword.
• People click your PPC ad and come to your site.
• They buy stuff.
• You’re happy.
• And it only cost you 10¢ for the click! What a bargain.
  

Or is it?

Let’s say that you get 100 clicks on your ad.
And of those 100 clicks, 1 person buys your product. (that’s a 1% conversion rate)
Let’s say your average sale is $35.00

You paid this much for your ad: 100 x 10¢= $10
Which means your Cost-Per-Acquistion (CPA) was $10

Can you afford to pay $10 for every $35 you make?

CPA is an important consideration when creating PPC campaigns.
It’s affected by:

• The number of clicks you receive
• The number of people who buy from those clicks
• The amount you pay per click
  

You can dramatically alter your CPA by paying attention to:

• The relevancy of the ad you place with the keyword
• The destination you link the ad to (does it make sense to the user and does it help them or confuse them?)
• The price you’re paying per click
• Conversion rate from visitor to buyer
• Abandonment rates – figure out why they are leaving without buying

I’d been on the lookout for the new Pepsi bottles for weeks – checking every cooler I passed at the mall, the grocery and the many many airports I spend time in, but I’d had no luck. Weeks of no luck. Weeks of drinking diet coke in protest.

And then it happened: standing in front of the frosty freshly stocked Pepsi cooler I saw a glimmer from the back row – the long awaited yellow caps!

With precision and balance as can only be achieved holding a laptop bag, keys, and wallet while perched on 3″ heels, I eagerly pulled blue capped bottle after blue capped bottle until I reached the elusive yellow caps. (Yes, I put the others back when I was done.)

Sure, people stared – snickered and gasped even.

But I didn’t care. I had two frosty, bubbly, yellow capped Pepsi’s. Blissful.

Using the web isn’t anything new you say? Yes, the web has been used for promotion before, but never this effortlessly. Even if you’re not an iTunes freak, or a Pepsi fan, this is one marketing campaign to watch and learn from.

P.S. 2 bottles – 2 winners. Time to turn up the tunes.

It’s quite spooky to get faceless birthday emails from corporations – makes me wonder what other info they have on me. What’s next? Will I receive wedding gifts this October from the likes of Johnson & Johnson and Colgate?

This is a classic example of personalization gone wrong.

Now on the other hand… personalization can be done well.

Amazon, for example, knows what I like & what’s on my wish list. I have a long standing interactive relationship with Amazon. The birthday greeting here may have been automated, but at least I got something tangible out of it – a discount for things I want anyway.

Wine.com also shot over a birthday greeting with a $10 coupon, which was great. Again – a long standing customer relationship where greetings and coupons are welcomed.

The lesson to be learned here: it’s okay to reach out to your customers, even in an automated fashion, as long as it’s relevant. It’s never okay to use someone’s birthday as a reason to spam them – it’s empty and shallow and a big waste of your marketing dollars.

Now I’m off for that birthday latte.