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Direct_Response_Marketing
| Direct Response Marketing
As marketing dollars dry up, targeted advertising is gaining.
How do you run your direct response program?
IMAGINE THIS: YOU OPEN AN ACCOUNT IN A MAJOR search engine by
charging $10 to your credit card. You then place highly focused
ads in the account pointing to the relevant page of your
e-commerce site. By the end of the day you have received 2000
visitors to your site at the cost of $1000, ($0.50 per click).
And best of all, you haven’t even had to pay for the ads yet..
Further imagine that you have made 20 sales at $500 each, ending
the day with $10,000 revenue. You just made a $3000 gross
profit. You then pay the search engine $1000 and you are left
with a net profit of $2000.
Direct Response Marketing – Redefined This is today’s reality.
Immediate Purchase Intent is the name of the game when it comes
to Direct Response Marketing. A traditional marketer on-line and
off-line is not accustomed to having immediately measurable ROI
like this. And Search engines are a cost effective way to
acquire qualified prospects, and convert them in to buyers
immediately.
Search is one of the Internet’s most essential and wanted
services. As popular as email, search has morphed into an
advertising avenue that leverages the web’s inherent ability to
link consumers and small- to mid-sized businesses in ways that
traditional media alternatives cannot match.
Where else can advertisers “self-serve” themselves to an
audience of 200 million-plus consumers, communicate directly
with only those prospects who are specifically and currently
seeking the goods, services and information that the advertiser
provides, and at a cost of $0.15-$0.50 for each customer lead?
No other advertising avenue, online or offline is growing as
fast as search is currently. In my opinion, search’s impressive
growth through the worst ad market in a decade is a testament to
its value proposition and potential.
Controlled ROI The great thing about search-based advertising is
that, as an advertiser you can control your keywords and ad
creative in real time by adjusting the position of your ads,
based on its real-time measurable performance/cost analysis.
By using some simple software like GOTOAST you can do this
optimization across the board in all the search engines,
portals, directories and intermediate syndication channels such
as Overture. These apps automatically check the status and
position of your bids as often as you choose and makes
appropriate strategic bidding changes based on your parameters.
It saves you money by making sure you do not overpay for your
preferred position and helps increase sales by ensuring your
listings are located where you want them, at the price range you
are willing to pay. Whether you have thousands of keywords or
just very active, competitive listings, for only dollars a day,
it makes your life easier and puts more money on your bottom
line.
Instant Gratification And if the ROI works for you, OR you are
smart enough to make this work for you, one can control as much
as 1 million keywords through these types of software in real
time. This can help you generate large amount of revenue with a
tight control on ROI, which you can measure and control every
minute. Tens of thousands of business owners already know about
one of the best kept secrets on the Internet: paying for small
text advertisements on search engines on a “pay-per-click”
basis. Probably the best part about pay-per-click advertising is
there is no waiting around. Instant Gratification. Qualified
visitors to your web site, no matter what your budget is.
Search and Search Engines Search is becoming the fulcrum on
which much of the business on the Internet swings and has become
one of the interesting businesses on the Internet, with growing
consumer usage, powerful advertiser adoption, advance
technological progress, and enormous revenue and profit growth
for many search players. Pay-for-performance search advertising
has been so successful that it has focused every serious
player’s attention on its commercial promise and profitability.
In fact, the Internet boom all started with search during the
initial public offerings of Yahoo!, Excite, Infoseek, and Lycos
in 1996 and 1997. Since then, search has “reinvented’ itself
several times - from search engine, to portal, to traditional
media partner, to struggling .com’s, to re-emerging survivors.
Ironically, four years of “progress” reached this tipping point:
search is now a business, not just a feature.
A Web search is like a three act play: it starts with the
consumer who would like to make the search, who then uses the
software and other technology in Act Two which makes the search
possible, and ends with the protagonist’s arrival at the web
page that was searched for. Value is added to this interplay
when consumers are able to easily find the information they are
looking for. Consumers gain value from arriving at sites that
fulfill their needs or suit their interests; destination sites
derive value from an inbound flow of visitors who are interested
in what they have to offer; and search hosts and intermediaries
extract value from making the introduction and the link between
the two.
It is estimated that approximately 60 million households, or 90%
of the online audience, use Web search services each month.
Internet users typically conduct about 6 billion Web searches
with over 10 million different search terms employed regularly.
The most popular search sites today are Google.com, Yahoo!.com,
Microsoft’s MSN, and AOL. The most-used search technologies are
offered by Google, Inktomi, FAST, and AltaVista, which are
cannibalizing each other at an alarming rate.
Paid Listing Phenomena Many online advertisers are finding that
the performance of Web banners, pop-ups and other forms of
Internet advertising including e-mail is declining. Customers
are starting to ignore anything on a page that looks like an
advertisement. Because of the decreasing effectiveness of these
forms of advertising, paid search engine placement has emerged
as an effective, important but controversial, alternative
because they are not necessarily perceived as ads.
These paid listings allow you to truly buy your way to the top
of the major search engines. All you have to do is bid on search
terms related to your product or service, and then provide a
listing for the search results. The amount of traffic you bring
to your site is limited primarily by how much you bid.
Here is a summary of the many unique advantages of paid
listings:
• They generate large volumes of site traffic easily. • They let
you avoid the complexities of web pages search engine
optimization. • They give you immediate, measurable results. •
You only pay for listings that get clicked on, so it’s a cost-
effective way to do targeted marketing. Overture, Findwhat,
Kanoodle, Espotting and Sprinks, are top-rated companies
handling paid listings. You’ll find their listings showing up on
most of the major search engines, portals and directories except
for Google.Google has a proprietary paid listing program that’s
highly rated as well.
How can you capitalize on a paid- listing program? • Choose the
web site pages and offers you want to promote with paid listings
• Calculate your average profit-per-purchase for the items or
services on these pages • Find the keywords and phrases
consumers are most likely to use to find your listings • Write
paid-listings results that include your search phrase • Place
listings using a link to your landing pages that can be easily
tracked • Figure ROI by monitoring the cost of your listings
against sales • Re-write your ads and adjust your placement bids
on a continuing basis to keep them in the optimal position in
the marketplace
And good luck!
By Yatin Patel Published in http://www.siliconindia.com June 2003
About the author:
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