Measuring the effectiveness of your website is clearly critical to your marketing plan . If it is not already, website analytics should become central to your marketing evaluation and planning. Knowing where people are coming from and what they are doing while on your site are clearly important. Tracking inbound visitors and finding the specific actions these visitors take can help you make decisions on advertising partners, keyword selection and more.

The attached article on B2B Magazine illustrates how Citrix Systems was able to identify that 80% of their registrations were derived from just FOUR keywords.

“UNEXPECTED INSIGHTS
Web analytics have provided some unexpected insights. For example, using NetInsight, Citrix found sponsored links from Google and Yahoo were most effective. Four keywords drove 80% of registrations. Interestingly, those four were “software forum,” “IT conference,” “network security seminar” and “software presentation,” Zykoski said. “This is not what we would have projected, which is why analytics is such a great vehicle to show you facts about what is really happening,” she said.

The company redesigned its landing pages and minisites for Synergy to highlight those terms and optimized the sites to funnel visitors through to registration.

Web analytics showed that online ads, specifically banners on industry sites, had the highest cost per registration, Zykoski said. “In one case we spent $20,000 on a campaign and only received one registration [attributable to it],” she said. Knowing the effectiveness of different campaigns enabled Citrix to increase registrations while maintaining or even reducing its marketing spending.”

View full article: http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100308/FREE/303089998/1007/METRICS

Post by Property Centric.

Renters able to easily save thousands on holiday purchases, thanks to partnership between Property Centric Search Marketing Solutions and Reward Media Group

Dec 10, 2009 – Philadelphia, PA - Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Property Centric, a leader in local search marketing, and Reward Media Group, the leader in online coupons, have partnered to save renters thousands of dollars by providing their users easy access to each other’s money-saving offers.
Renters visiting Property Centric local search engines can now browse and use Reward Media Group’s online coupons that provide discounts on local and national purchases. In addition, renters can print and redeem hundreds of coupons offered monthly.
“We want to provide consumers with easy access to superior savings on leading brands, both on and offline,” said Rob Remus, president of Property Centric. “By joining forces, Property Centric and Reward Media are able to deliver users the best of both savings sites—and just in time for the holiday shopping season.”  “Reward Media Group is extremely excited to partner with Property Centric to offer great savings to consumers” said Nick Bettin, president of Reward Media Group
Property Centric has 45 local search sites across 30 of the nation’s largest markets serving more than 500,000 renters.  With apartment residents looking for ways to save this holiday season and during the economic downturn, both companies expect this partnership to thrive now and in the future.

Post by Property Centric.

Bruce Clay Debunks Local Search Myths at PubCon 2009

Post by Greg Starr.

Excerpted from SearchEngineLand.com: How To Choose Content Management Systems For SEO

Nowadays, a great many websites  are powered by a content management system (CMS) along with a back-end database. And for good reason. It’s too unwieldy to code HTML on a page-by-page basis, as you expand your content offerings to the thousands or tens of thousands of pages (and beyond). Content managements systems to the rescue! But there can be downsides too.

My biggest gripe with the content management systems of today is their lack of SEO features. And I’m not talking about meta keywords, which are a complete waste of time.

I’m patiently waiting for the day when a CMS-based site can rival static HTML sites…(Read More)

Post by Property Centric.

Get rid of the click as the de facto standard to measure the success of an online campaign. It’s outdated and doesn’t represent real success. So says Gian Fulgoni, chairman and co-founder of comScore, at the MediaPost OMMA Metrics & Measurement conference in San Francisco, Calif., Friday.

In the keynote, Fulgoni told attendees the Internet is far more successful in increasing sales. And it may be the most measurable medium, but not everything measurable matters.

So, what now? Fulgoni says advertisers and marketers need to forget the click, focus on the sales impact on campaigns and conduct post-buy analysis. They also need to realize that display ads help search advertising succeed and vice versa. Don’t forget the power of creative display ads. Online branding campaigns can be effective. Internet advertising has had an impact on retail that is on par with television.

Advertisers and marketers just want some type of metrics that show the online campaign reaches the demographics and promised target segments. Fulgoni says that in any new medium, it’s easy to make promises that exceed the ability of the technology. And to some degree, Internet advertising has done that. “One problem is, it’s too easy to exaggerate the promises and claims that can be delivered,” he says.

Fulgoni believes the industry has failed to eliminate the click as…(Read more)

Post by Property Centric.

Spend Local–Online - Entrepreneur.com

Reach a younger, hipper market for a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising.

Post by Greg Starr.

A new shopping behavioral trend has emerged in recent months: the info shopper. Fiscal responsibility is top of mind and whether we need or want something, we’re going to pour over the details before we spend our hard-earned cash.

Even offline purchases are scrutinized these days. People are increasingly suspect of TV ads, particularly frustrated with the lack of critical decision-making information available via the traditional format. Consumers are pursuing their curiosities online, learning a lot and gaining confidence throughout the process. 92% of respondents to a recent survey by Penn, Scoen and Berland have more confidence in the information they glean rather than in store clerks or other sources. Cars, homes, computers and medical care are top info-seeking areas, with 4 out of 5 shoppers gathering data online before buying.

As is usually the case, consumer behavior is changing more rapidly than marketers of products. People want full disclosure upfront. Dyson’s model of sharing the secret of their unique products with customers builds trust and increases loyalty.But many companies fail to divulge details that have become necessary for consumers to even consider buying their products.

The trend manifests in everything from big ticket items to daily personal care products. For instance, instead of just buying the same shampoo they’ve always purchased, people want to know whether it will work well with their hair type, color, whether the plastic is recyclable, what the ingredients are and what other shoppers think of the shampoo. Trivial information perhaps to some, but important to others who care more about value then ever before. After all, why waste money on a purchase that isn’t in the good to excellent category when better buying decisions are a few clicks away?

Well-informed decisions are now a right, not a luxury. That’s why aggregator and search sites will become more valuable, as they mash-up content from reviews,  manufacturers and press, giving buyers more of an unbiased story from which they can draw their own conclusions.

Post by Jennifer Gosse.

SEOptimise’s blog, “Five online marketing New Year’s resolutions” provides 5 healthy reminders for your 2009 resolutions, especially if you’re still not optimizing your online marketing potential via search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO).

Resolutions include: set a budget, start a blog, focus on your audience, seek experts (especially wnen you don’t exactly know what to do or where to start), and be personable (build relationships, don’t toot your brand’s horn).

Don’t let fear of failure or of the unknown daunt your marketing resolutions. Sure, there are significant changes in the economy, consumer behavior and online marketing techniques. While our realities are undergoing constant evolution, there are certain SEO truisms that still reign supreme, such as: lots of relevant, keyword-rich content, great inbound links and proper site architecture and formatting.

Focus on the basics, put forth a plan and just take the first steps. A little action, even if imperfect, is better than procrastinating for a better quarter, bigger budgets, or more stable economy. Go forth and resolve to better position your site in 2009!

Post by David Gosse.

John Mitchell of Property Centric discusses the custom local search engine solution for multifamily owners and managers during the Apartment Internet Marketing Conference.

Post by Greg Starr.

SearchIgnite reports a 33% increase in retailer’s ad spending over last year illustrates that retailers are likely pouring more dollars into search campaigns which can be monitored and tweaked in real-time.

Roger Barnette, president of SearchIgnite notes: “Advertisers are shifting more dollars to paid search and digital media. Retailers want media they can buy on a performance bases to track and measure.”

Despite a decline in overall consumer spending, people are steadily purchasing goods over the Internet. Observationally, retailers are offering more incentives earlier in the season than is typical,  likely incentivizing consumers to go ahead and make necessary and discretionary purchases.

Post by David Gosse.