Tom Lindmeier’s Blog @ MarketPlanB

Do you have a disproportionate reliance on paid search? Paid search is the fast and easy way to quickly ramp up your business but you can quickly reach a ceiling where your ROI is maxed out and efficiency gains are difficult to accomplish. In contrast a natural search program is a slower development process with almost no efficiency ceiling. I have yet to meet anyone in the retail business who believes that their natural search program doesn’t have significant have room for improvement and unlimited potential.

There was a very intelligent discussion on Cord Silversteins blog titled Engage Your Customers or Die where he asks the question: “Is it a good thing for companies to try to engage their customers online? Does the good outweigh the possible repercussions that could come from it?”. The repercussions were defined as the big bad things that can happen if you do not handle every instance right.

If you read my previous post on the Invisible Visitor, I maintained that that the route to understanding our customers is engagement. Once they become visible, you are then positioned to make strategic decisions that result in major marketing breakthroughs. So the question is not “if” you should engage but rather “how”.

In my previous article titled 3 Guaranteed Methods for Driving Conversion I highlighted the need to cover a wide variety of user preferences. Users gravitate to specific shopping methods and will not necessarily use the best or efficient means to complete a transaction. The list I provided was a list of basics that you need to get right before proceeding with other programs because the ROI is guaranteed.

Where do you go next? The next step is to classify user preferences that are unique to your business by examining paths to conversion in your analytics. Typical classifications may look like this:

There was an interesting discussion on Ron Shevlin’s blog on the Anti-Web. 2.0 Movement. It’s a ludicrous concept to rally against an unfortunate buzzword, but they do bring up some interesting arguments by identifying the irrational exuberance and engage in a sobering discussion of the potential impact of Web 2.0.

We do need to step back and evaluate where this is headed and analyze if the attempts of marketers to monetize it will ever succeed. A recurring theme I do see is the businesses that deliver the technology are making a bundle of money and the businesses that are attempting to use it to market their customer base are for the most part, experiencing moderate or no success. However, I believe marketers will eventually learn from their mistakes and do it right.

Anyone who manages or is an employee in a marketing department faces the constant demands of driving revenue. After celebrating a successful campaign you will hear the comment, “that’s great, but what have you done for me today?” There is a constant debate concerning short term gains and long term strategies. Unless you are blessed [...]

All moderately sophisticated Ecommerce businesses to know how users navigate their site, how they entered, how they were referred and the domains they prefer. They compile profiles that users volunteer and engage in user testing and constantly tune their web sites to run at peak efficiency. All the data is gathered and cleverly analyzed so [...]