Emergence Media

For a number of years, I’ve spoken about SEO-PPC keyword management integration and I’ve spoken a few times about the need to integrate Social Media and SEO efforts. But what many of us have forgotten from time to time is that awareness via display can significantly impact search traffic and conversion.

Josh Dreller of Fuor Digital writes:

“As we move away as an industry from “the last ad click” methodology and start measuring all of the media interactions that influence users to perform our converting actions, it’s become clear that other engagement strategies should be considered within the media mix. In a recent campaign for one of my clients, 39% of all search conversions had a previous banner view in the mix. It’s very possible that a portion of those conversions would never had happened unless the banner drove a user to search.” (Emphasis mine)

Thirty-nine percent is a lot of paid search conversions that were assisted by display. Indeed, back in 2004, DoubleClick, working with Continental Airlines, did one of the most thorough and often referenced studies on view-through and found the following:

Click-through rates dropped slightly from 0.48 percent in the first quarter of 2004 to 0.43 percent in the second quarter, but view-through rates — which measure responses over time — grew considerably. According to DoubleClick, the view-through rate for Q2 measured 0.73 percent compared to 0.59 percent in Q1.

Take Aways

1. Is your team doing cross-channel tracking?
   People don’t experience media (and your brand for that matter) with a series of separate discrete media channels, and you shouldn’t track it as such.
2. Are you needlessly cutting Display for the sake of the ROI safety of Paid Search?
   Your C-level boss is breathing down your neck to ensure all marketing activities are ROI accountable and this sometimes means that display (online and offline like TV) gets cut for the sake of the trackable paid search. But maybe those sweet ROI numbers you’re getting on Google Adwords is driven by your local TV campaign?
3. Paid Search has limits.
   Many folks talk about paid search like it is the only game in town, but as Josh Dreller points out, conversion is a multi-stage process. Search is sometimes simply the final click before deciding to make a purchase.
4. Understand each stage of your customer purchase relationship lifecycle
   …And how you can help move the customer from awareness to customer to repeat customer and evangelist. Here’s how SocialRep define the customer relationship lifecycle, but your company is probably slightly different: