Internet Metrics

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Calculating the Value of Internet Opportunities

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From Clicks to ValueUnderstanding Internet Marketing Metrics

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The biggest challenge with marketing metrics is the Internet which is the Wild West.

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The Internet is the new frontier for marketing and is not yet completely figured out

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In the American West of the 1800s, there was lawlessness, bandits and ad hoc laws and approaches for survivial

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Internet marketing is much the same

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Innovation occurs rapidly and rules are continuously re-written – if written at all

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When we first started this journey, I talked about a marketing divide – that few organizations “get” data-driven marketing and majority do not

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This divide is alive and well for Internet marketing.

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Our approach to understanding Internet marketing is to start by focusing on the biggest piece of online marketing budgets and work our way forward from there.

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In November 2008, eMarketer published a survey that found Search Engine Marketing (SEM) was 45% of online marketing spending and was predicted to be 49% of spending in 2010.

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When we talk about Internet marketing metrics, there are some basics like CPC, TCR and ROA that take a bit of time to get used to, but the effort is worth the result.

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Metric – Cost Per Click (CPC)

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When we talk about Internet marketing, the discussion starts with the most basic discussion –

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Cost Per Clickvs.

Cost Per Thousand Impressions

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In 2004, on a flight from Washington, DC to Chicago, I happened to sit next to a senior partner from a big five consulting firm

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He said to me –

“I don’t get it – search is easy. What’s the big deal about Google?”

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Search engines are fairly straightforward. They create “robots” that scour the Web and tabulate all the web pages in existence and the keywords on these pages.

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We, as users, can search this very large table for specific web pages with corresponding keywords.

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The challenge in SEM is ordering the very big list of web pages with keywords you want in some way to make sense.

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In the early days of the Internet, search engines counted the number of keywords on a page to define the search order – more occurrence meant higher rankings

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So web developers just listed their keywords lots of times on a each page to influence the search order. To fight this, Yahoo! Had buildings full of people to review these results.

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But in 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had an insight that would change the world. They had the idea to rank-order search web pages on the number of links to a given web page.

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That means that the more people who link to a web page, the higher the ranking of the page.

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On September 4th, 1998 – Google was incorporated and patented as the best search engine algorithm in the world.

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The marketing business model for the Internet up until 1997 had been based upon CPM – Cost Per Thousand Impressions.

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That means that every time an advertisement appears on a web page (impression), the advertiser is charged the rate.

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1997 brought about the first CPC – Cost Per Click – model, which is now the standard for measurement in SEM.

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Cost Per ClickThe Essential Search Engine Marketing

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CPC vs. CPM is a subtle shift in global Internet marketing strategy

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In the CPM model, the person doing the search is most important and advertisers pay just to be seen by the searcher.

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In the CPC model, the company being searched is more important, and advertisers pay for a click-through that has good odds of resulting in a purchase.

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CPC is the equivalent of Demand Generation Marketing.

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The CPC for Google is very expensive – you can spend hundreds and thousands of dollars a day depending on the volume of search words and how broad your geography is.

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So how do we ensure that we are getting the biggest bang for the marketing buck in SEM?

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For this, we need a few more metrics and two essential ones that we will discuss.

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Transaction Conversion Rate (TCR)

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Internet search is broken down into two components….

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Natural Search – Organic Search&Sponsored Search

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Natural searches are the search results based in part on the number of links to a page from other sites.

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Sponsored Searches are the paid links on the top and sides of the search page.

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Our focus is on the sponsored search results since we as marketers can control these.

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When we talk about about sponsored search marketing, we need to understand that there are two more terms that we should be familiar with…

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Bid Strategy – the placement you would like to get on the page.

1 – 4 are the first 4 sponsored links5 – 6 are the following two

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Match Type – the user must type the exact words (exact match type) or the words can be typed in any order (broad match type). Match type can also include phrases (phrase match).

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In Match type, there is also negative matching which allows us to exclude specific words/phrases.

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So let’s look at some examples

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VOIP can have a broad or exact match type. For example, “VOIP calls to Turkey” is a phrase match.

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But Turkey is also part of a brand name of alcohol. So using negative match type, we can exclude the phrase “Wild Turkey” so that alcohol results would not be included.

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Transaction Conversion Rate

The percentage of customers who purchase after clicking through to your web site

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In addition to CPC, the next really useful Internet marketing metric is click-through rate (CTR)

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Click-Through Rate

The percentage of customers who click through on a link and is calculated from the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions (ad served).

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The central idea of SEM marketing is that you buy keywords and placement with specific match types.

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So to understand CTR…

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You might bid $4 for VOIP with a broad match type and a bid strategy of 1 – 4. That would mean…

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Position 1 - $4Position 2 - $3Position 3 - $2Position 4 - $1

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Looking at other bids and strategies, you would end up paying up to $4 for every click after a VOIP search.

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Now, Google works on a volume basis. If you have a high historical CTR, you can get a higher placement for a lower CPC. Google favors those who have high volumes and high probabilities for CT.

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Why?

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It maximizes Google’s revenue

Google Revenue = CPC x # of clicks

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Why is this model bad?

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It favors large brands with a history of good CTR. That means if you are new to the SEM market, with no history, it will be difficult to get higher positions at fair pricing.

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We use CTR and TCR to calculate the Take Rate

Take Rate = CTR x TCR

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The take rate is just the percentage of customers who click through times the percentage who convert to a sale once they click through.

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Return on Ad Dollars Spent (ROA)ROI for Search Engine Marketing

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To complete the SEM metrics, we need to cover the equivalent of ROI for SEM –

Return on Ad Dollars Spent (ROA)

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Return on Ad Dollars Spent

Measures the efficiency of generating net revenues from ad dollars spent when the end action is the purchase.

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ROA is calculated as follows:

ROA = Net Revenue/Cost

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Understanding the Numbers

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Optimizing Your SEM Strategy

1. Optimize the Publisher Strategy – Figure out which publisher will give you the best results for the money you are spending.

2. Optimize the Campaign Strategy – Analyze the campaigns within the publisher to determine the campaign changes needed to deliver the most value

3. Calculate the KPI Impact – Determine the impact of campaign changes on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as net revenue and ROA.

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