Driving Online Traffic and Measuring Offline Phone Conversions

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1 Driving Online Traffic and Measuring Offline Phone Conversions Executive Summary We are in the midst of an ever-evolving digital world and every aspect of your online efforts must complement and support your overall marketing mix, especially any offline advertising. The ongoing challenge for brands to obtain greater market penetration requires them to adapt or die. In this white paper we will review how to leverage online advertising to its fullest by generating quality SEM campaigns and effectively measuring offline phone conversions with the latest advances in call tracking. Consider this example: Jack s Supply Company specializes in roofing supplies and invests $5,000 into a Google Adwords campaign to drive traffic to his website. During the one-month campaign, Jack s online analytics tracked 5,000 clicks and the phone rang approximately 250 times. Using advanced call-tracking technologies in conjunction with Jack s online analytics Jack was able to identify that, of the 250 phone calls, nearly 200 of the inquiries were directly from the SEM campaign. Those 200 phone calls resulted in $50,000 worth of business. Was this PPC worth the investment? Looking at the ratio between Jack s ad spending, visitor traffic, and call to revenue volume the answer is a resounding yes! Creating a successful SEM campaign that will drive a substantial amount of traffic and generate quantifiable sales requires the proper mechanisms to help marketers understand where sales come from and provide a deeper understanding of the connection between the online and offline marketplace. With this in-depth information you can gain a better understanding of how to drive online traffic and measure the resulting offline phone conversions. NY C SF AT L P HL

2 Driving Online Traffic and Measuring Offline Phone Conversions The Importance of an Online Presence According to a report published by Forrester Research, over $155 billion worth of consumer goods were purchased online in the U.S. in More importantly, Forrester also estimated that $917 billion worth of in-store retail sales were web influenced and accounted for 42 percent of total retail sales. That percentage is expected to grow to 53% percent by 2014, with the web expecting to influence 1.4 billion worth of in-store sales. In today s multi-channel world, people will continue to search online, visit stores to test out the products, return to the Internet to compare prices and then complete the purchases either online, in the store, or over the phone itself. With the increasing number of offline transactions happening as the result of an online search, retailers of all types are expanding product offerings and incentives to drive online traffic that will eventually lead to increasing offline sales. Along with any online incentive marketing efforts, marketers must be prepared to measure the offline conversions in order to justify the spending. When marketers simply measure online clicks alone, they don t have a complete picture of the conversion value from their total marketing efforts. Many marketers are unaware of the new technologies available to analyze and measure online to offline conversions and how call tracking can tie the two pieces together for a complete picture of the sales cycle. While phone call tracking isn t new, many people are not familiar with the more advanced options of phone call tracking solutions. For example, every time a phone call results from an online advertisement, call tracking technology can record all of the granular information resulting from that transaction including the keyword and source that is driving the call. This data is logged into real-time reports that can be integrated with a customer relationship management system. This information allows businesses to optimize their marketing activities for those online methods that generate the highest conversion value. If you re not attempting to measure the influence of search on offline sales, you are probably underestimating the value of your online marketing efforts! NY C SF AT L P HL Many marketers are unaware of the new technologies available to analyze and measure online to offline conversions and how call tracking can tie the two pieces together for a complete picture of the sales cycle. While phone call tracking isn t new, many people are not familiar with the more advanced options of phone call tracking solutions.

3 Driving Online Traffic and Measuring Offline Phone Conversions Growing Your Online Presence With Search Engine Optimization How can you get more visitors to your website? What can you do to stimulate traffic? While there are various options, one strategy is Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ). Many small businesses who are not familiar with paid search are more inclined to look for opportunities to optimize their website for better search ranking. It can be a race to the top of the page for search engine listings. Optimized websites can be considered the easiest way to dissolve your competition. But, how do you optimize your site? What are search engines looking for? How it works: Every search engine, including Google, Bing and Yahoo, has developed its own unique algorithm to search ( crawl ) the Internet for the most accurate information relating to a user s search. The engines use search engine robots ( bots ) to scour the web and evaluate and index each individual website s data. When a user submits a query search through the search engine, each website gets ranked and compared to others so that when all of the results are retrieved they are listed in order as to what was the best match for the end user. Search Engine Optimization is the process to make your website more search friendly so it will appear higher in the listings, below the PPC results on the home page of Google. SEO is a long-term investment. Using proper SEO to optimize your website will help show the search engines that your business is the answer to the users search and cause it to place your website higher up in the results. With proper SEO, you can drive traffic to your site and increase your business return over time. Positioning Your Website at the Top SEO is important for businesses to rank organically over time, but if your business is looking for an immediate boost in targeted traffic and measuring their direct ROI, then search engine marketing ( SEM ) may be worth the investment. SEM is also sometimes referred to as cost-per-click ( CPC ) or pay- per-click ( PPC ) marketing because your business only pays when a website user clicks on one of your search engine listings and visits your website you only pay for qualified traffic. As nearly 70% of all online searches are on Google, most paid search advertisers use Google s Adwords service to create their marketing campaigns. In addition to the home page of Google, the Google network includes millions of partners and affiliates that display Google Ads (the Google Display Network) that will help expand the reach of your marketing message. The value of SEM is that it directly translates to ROI. You are able to create, manage, and track your ad campaigns online. Simply put, you are able to see the concrete flow of revenue in comparison to your marketing efforts. NYC SF ATL PHL

4 Driving Online Traffic and Measuring Offline Phone Conversions Why it s Important to Position Yourself Above Your Competitors If information is easily accessible and readily available online then why not utilize digital technology? Marketers must learn how to harness the true power of the online realm. Whether you re a small business owner with a limited budget or the SVP of Marketing for a Fortune 500 company, search engine marketing is important. If your business is not online, your competitor probably is; and your competitor is reaping the benefits of your lost business. Business is about getting to the top, and being the first name that comes to mind when a customer thinks of a specific product or service constantly striving to beat out the next brand that shares your consumer base. In order to maintain high visibility online against your competitors, you must first develop a strategic SEM plan Analyze the landing pages of the website for which you are creating the campaign (also take into consideration of the brand image outside the website as well). Analyze the target audience who are you attracting? Create a set of account structures, campaigns, and ad groups that best reflect the brand, the website, and the target audience. Research extensively a list of effective keywords and phrases for the campaign that make the most sense for your type of buyer. Scrutinize and oversee your accounts on a daily basis with reporting to update and optimize. Do they correspond to the overall campaign message? Make sure to target your keywords with aspects such as geography, mobile devices, and ad placements. In some cases, some campaigns require a retargeting strategy as well. This means that brands want to reconnect with their consumers that have already visited their site creating a full prospect list. (Using browser cookies usually does the job here.) Last, but not least, you must implement and enforce a tracking method to measure your offline and online influences, to understand the value and full effectiveness of your SEM dollars, and to see where it is exactly your best customers are. NYC SF ATL PHL

5 Driving Online Traffic and Measuring Offline Phone Conversions Tracking the Value of your SEO and SEM Efforts Whether your SEM or SEO goals are to obtain higher rankings, increase brand awareness, change customer attitudes or even stimulate an increase in sales, measuring the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts is critical. It s not enough to just think about the quantity of people who visit a website and the keyword or source that brought them, but in the end what was the accurate return on investment for online advertisement. By installing a call tracking solution businesses will be able to: Track the keyword or source that drove a visitor to your website into a third party bid management or customer relationship management system. By implementing a call tracking solution such as source and keyword tracking marketers will have a complete view of the sales cycle. Single Location with Keyword Tracking Session level call tracking is ideal for businesses that are beginning to heavily investing paid search in order to drive web traffic. Rather than just gathering the number of visitors or clicks marketers may be looking for the granular data associated with their keyword driven marketing campaigns. By installing a session level call tracking technology on the website, a dynamic phone call tracking number is associated with each unique visitor, and all granular data, including keyword, source, and media type is tracked and associated with each and any offline phone conversion. With the advancements in call tracking technology, Internet marketers now have the tools to tie together a complete picture surrounding their online paid search spending and offline call performance. Having clarity surrounding your marketing performance equates to better spending decisions and ultimately higher returns on marketing dollars. Single Location with Source Tracking Source tracking is ideal for businesses that are invested in online advertising. It is becoming increasingly important for businesses to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements in order to track where each visitor comes from. By installing source level phone call tracking, a unique phone number is associated with each online advertisement source. When a visitor converts via an offline phone call, marketers will be able to associate the call with the proper PPC/CPC advertising source. NYC SF ATL PHL

6 Driving Online Traffic and Measuring Offline Phone Conversions Conclusion The partnership between Elite SEM and Mongoose Metrics during a marketing campaign is not only complementary, but a necessity. From a search engine marketing perspective, tracking where the money is coming from is the most valuable information any marketer can have. An online PPC campaign may cost thousands of dollars to generate brand awareness and brand recognition, and it may be clear as to how many potential consumers saw and clicked on the ad, but how many of those potential customers followed through and converted offline? With a way to track spending, visits, and offline conversions, SEM campaigns can be that much more effective. In this age of free information, our goal as partners is to create valuable campaigns that drive qualified online traffic and effectively measure the source and keywords that drove measurable results. By utilizing the services at EliteSEM and Mongoose Metrics, businesses are now able to efficiently track the path a user took from the search engines all the way to the sale that happened as a result of their search! Get started on your action plan to efficiently and effectively drive online traffic and measure the offline conversions. As preferred partners, EliteSEM and Mongoose Metrics, welcome the opportunity for you to learn more about driving traffic and measuring the sales cycle in order to maximize ROI! NY C SF AT L P HL