• Of course you want greater ROI from paid search
• And of course you want to make more money from paid search and spend less time worrying about it, right?
• And how about an unfair advantage over your competitors?

First Rate has teamed up with SearchIgnite to deliver you exactly that.

As Australasia’s leader in Search & Performance we have been appointed as the exclusive licensee in New Zealand and Australia for the Search Engine Marketing technology offered by SearchIgnite™, one of the world’s leading providers of SEM bid management.

This arrangement provides First Rate with an advanced suite of tools to manage, optimise, track and report on your SEM campaigns. And when you combine this advanced technology with our talented team of Adwords qualified professionals, you’ll get even greater results.

The main benefits include significant operating efficiencies, more in-depth campaign reporting and improved digital media ROI.

The same technology that is currently used by more than 500 clients world-wide, optimising over 50 million keywords and delivering $6 billion in online transactions annually is now available to New Zealand advertisers.

Key Features of the SearchIgnite™ Technology

Here is a list of some of SearchIgnite’s best features:

Predictive and Automated Bid Optimization

Optimise your search spend using automated and predictive technology based on results:

• Optimise against a fixed budget to maximise revenue, conversions, profits or clicks
• Optimise against a business metric with no budget constraint to maximise results against a set CPA/CPS or ROAS target

Cross Channel Tracking and Attribution

Integrate data from multiple marketing channels (SEO, Display, Email, Partners, etc) to understand the whole picture and how each media channel is affected (assisted) by any others.  This goes beyond first click or last click tracking and leads to holistic campaign optimisation (not just search).

Ad Creative and Landing Page Testing and Optimisation

Easily identify, optimise and test both creative and landing pages to generate maximum conversions.

Cross Engine Efficiencies and Keyword Recommendations

Expand keyword lists and upload changes to multiple engines quickly and easily. This operating efficiency means more time is available for strategic decision making and allocating media to those channels that return the best ROI for your business.

Enhanced Reporting and Analysis

Easy to understand reporting tools complement existing web analytics packages such as Google Analytics with better channel-specific insights.

Don’t take our word for it

If you are investing  $10,000+ per month on paid search, you’ll not only see your results improve but you’ll get more sales at a lower cost just by using SearchIgnite™ technology.

There are plenty of SearchIgnite success stories such as E*TRADE who increased conversions by 299% as can be seen in the graph below. Please take 2 minutes to read the full E*TRADE case study.

Call us on 09 920 1740 or contact us via email to arrange for a no-obligation SearchIgnite presentation.

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With over 150,000 applications on the iTunes App Store and 30,000 apps in the Android Market, it is more important than ever for iPhone and other mobile app developers to approach the marketing of their apps professionally.

Do You Have a Mobile App Marketing Strategy?

Many developers don’t have an app marketing strategy, instead relying solely on the limited marketing provided by app store operators. The iPhone App store, the Android Market and the Windows Mobile Marketplace all promote apps through ‘featured’ and ‘top’ lists.

An app can, for example, be featured on the front page of the iTunes App Store, or in a ‘Top 20’ list in its category. These spots are viewed by millions of iTunes users, which makes them highly lucrative. Getting on one of these spots could spell phenomenal success. Stories of such quick success reverberate throughout the iPhone development community – from Ethan Nicholas’ iShoot, to Joel Comm’s iFart.

However, the competitive reality is that, while getting featured is almost guaranteed to make your app successful, there is no guarantee your app will ever get featured. Of the 150,000 apps in the iTunes App Store, Apple chooses to feature only about 100 on the front page of the store at any one time. At the same time the ‘Top 20’ lists are reserved exclusively to the most-downloaded apps, which in turn earns them more downloads and thus turns this method of promotion into a self-serving cycle that’s almost impossible to break into. Getting featured sells apps, but don’t depend on it.

Mobile App Marketing – Getting Bang for your Buck

This is why it is important to devise a marketing strategy. Step one in your marketing strategy is understanding who your potential customers are, and step two is figuring out how to get your app shown where these eyeballs hang out, while optimising for minimum cost. It sounds simple: advertise your gardening app in gardening-related channels, and your game on gaming-related channels, but what about optimising this process as best as you can? This is where you really need to get professional.

To get the most bang for your buck in advertising, it pays to optimise by cleverly targeting your ads not only to the appropriate demographic, but also at precisely the time they are most likely to purchase your app. Pitching your gardening app in a poster inside the pub, for example, probably won’t work – even if the pub is frequented by gardeners – because even if a patron was interested in your app, they would likely forget about it by the time they get a chance to browse the App Store.

Targeting Mobile App Users

Here are some tips for targeting your mobile app advertising campaigns:

Try in-app advertising

Adverts are shown while users are actively interacting with other iPhone apps – and thus aren’t distracted by socialising or drinking beer! This generally makes for the most cost-effective advertising.

Try targeted online advertising

Online advertising networks such as Google Adwords can target users by keywords and/or by website placement. – You can, for example, place your gardening app ad on a relevant gardening-related website.

Try offline – if you’ve got the budget

While some apps are lucky enough to get free coverage by offline media to great effect, most app developers would have to use commission payable advertising to ever appear in a publication. Paid offline advertising generally does not result in good returns on investment for mobile apps.

That’s because using offline advertising such as Billboards, TV, newspapers is expensive and reaches consumers too far from the App Store. It is akin to advertising beer to wine lovers: Sure if your campaign is exceptionally good you might convert a few – and have them rushing to search for your beer, but why not advertise your beer to beer lovers in the first place? That is, why not target your customers when they are looking at their computer or mobile screen?

Contact First Rate

If you are an iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile or any kind of mobile app developer, we can help with effective online marketing. Contact First Rate for a no-obligation chat.

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When it comes to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), I have to tell you – marketing managers make a lot of mistakes.

I can easily count 20 of them. Of these, there is one mistake that I see over and over again. When this mistake is committed, it can destroy the business value of any SEO project. The mistake I am referring to occurs within SEO Keyword Research.  I call it the High Search Volume Addiction (HSVA).

What is HSVA?

HSVA is the addiction to selecting SEO keywords that show high search demand today, to the exclusion of other key selection factors.

Now I want to make this clear – I get HSVA. I really do. In these busy times, researching and selecting keywords based on search demand alone, is compelling. Especially considering that many keyword selection tools are free, e.g. the Google Keyword Tool.

So you’ve just used a keyword tool, and discovered 3 keywords that produce the highest search volume in their category.  You’re feeling pretty good about investing your SEO dollars in these keywords. All good?

Maybe.

The truth is, search volume is just 1 of 3 factors to consider. You have to cross-check search demand with two other key research and selection tools: trend analysis, and conversion analysis.

Trend Analysis

Trend analysis is an underused tool in SEO keyword research. Trend analysis can help you determine whether or not the ‘high search volume’ keyword you have chosen to spend thousands of SEO dollars on, is a declining rollercoaster ride. In other words, trend analysis can help you determine whether your targeted keyword has retained, or increased, its search demand over the past three to four years.

Take a look at the keyword ‘bicycles’ below.  Based on its decreasing search demand since 2004, would you want to spend thousands in SEO fees to be #1 for this keyword?  Or would you rather focus your investment on another keyword that has proven its staying power?

• Source: Google Trends (Australia), 18 February 2010

Have a look at another related keyword, ‘bikes’. This one appears to have maintained its search demand over the same period:

• Source: Google Trends (Australia), 18 February 2010

Based on this trend analysis, which keyword would you choose?

We have one more step to go, before you make your final selection.

Conversion Analysis

I always marvel at how some marketing managers fail to grasp that SEO is just like paid search; the only difference is that instead of paying per click, you pay per month – the agency fee, that is.

Once you start thinking of SEO like SEM, you start to treat your keyword research with a lot more vigour.

Let me explain. Assume you took over as head of SEM for a large company, and then discovered that one of your search managers was bidding on 3 keywords that produced 40,000 clickthroughs between them at a cost of $40,000 – but with 0 conversions. What would you do? Would you be horrified? Would you consider firing that person?

If you answered yes to the above, I want to ask you: Why?

Probably because your search manager focused on search volume, but ignored Conversion. If an SEM keyword is clearly not converting, then why continue bidding on it and waste the company’s marketing budget? By the same logic, why would you invest your SEO dollars in keywords that show poor conversion history?

Whenever you conduct SEO keyword research, make sure you use your SEMconversion data to identify those keywords that show the highest conversion rate. Then cross-check these high-converting keywords against the keywords that have been identified through your previous search volume analysis and trend analysis.

This process should produce a list of SEO keywords that will generate the highest level of search volume (today and in the future) and conversion volume.

To summarise, the key tools to use for your SEO keyword research are search volume analysis, trend analysis, and conversion Analysis.

The above process might seem straightforward. Yet, when it comes time to conduct SEO keyword research, few marketing managers (or agencies for that matter), take the time to use these selection factors. This is probably due to the amount of research introduced by such a framework.

Those who do, ensure the success of their keyword selections, and SEO project in general.

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So has Google finally figured out social media?

On the 9^th February, Google officially launched Buzz for Gmail. On that day Todd Jackson, product manager for Gmail and Buzz at Google, defined Buzz as ‘an entire new world within Gmail’. He continued by describing it’s five key features:

1. Auto-following
2. Rich, fast sharing experience
3. Public and private sharing
4. Inbox integration
5. Just the good stuff

Buzz may be Google finally realising that they could possibly change social media as a tool – and as an industry, as they have previously done with so many other tools.

What does it all mean for Social Media?

With Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the plethora of failed social networking sites – is there space in the market for yet another one? – Do we really need this..?

To Facebook, Google Buzz is a threat. With many of its features emulating Friendfeed and the recently re-designed Facebook newsfeed, there exists endless possibilities for Google to jump on the coat tails of its success: In the first 56 hours of its launch, Google announced that there were over 9 million comments posted, over 200 mobile users checking in per minute and a total of 300,000 mobile check ins per day (!)

Despite the array of blogs about the rather negative buzz around Google Buzz and it’s privacy invasion, it seems that people are starting to embrace it.

Social Network Algorithmic Data Mining

Google’s consumer interaction has long attracted some criticism over the years with its unique method of contextually targeting ads based on the content that users are reading, searching for, or emailing. For consumers this has been a critical turning point in online privacy.

Yet this hasn’t stopped with Google Buzz: It tries to find your friends and connections through algorithms that watch what you do on Google services. It then lets you add more friends, but through the lens of Gmail. Where does the privacy invasion start and end..?

Or are we as users at fault here for giving Google too much power in the first place..? – We are, after all, getting most of Google’s tools for free – so in a sense exchanging free usage with Google’s data mining and ad targeting capabilities, now extended to our social connections.

Yes, Google is approaching the social networking battle in a different way to the norm: They are using their algorithms combined with what they know about your email to define the users and their social networks. Facebook, on the other hand, lets people pick other people to ‘befriend’ and connect with. That sounds more like social networking to me. Is Google allowing you to be social or allowing you to be stalked?

What do you think about Google Buzz?

Firstly, what do we make of Google Buzz as a marketing channel? I guess the jury is still out on that one; let’s try and figure out Twitter first, shall we?

Secondly, history has shown that Facebook has already won the war for social networking. For Google to challenge that title is similar to Facebook challenging them with a new web search engine. This is always going to be a dramatic, silly, uphill battle. However, how many times have Google been ‘knocked’ in the past to come back swinging? I wouldn’t count Buzz off just yet.

What do you think?

Please leave a comment, as always we read everything that is submitted and post relevant comments live with 24 hours.

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• Social Media, Search Engine Marketing and Keywords: The Uncensored Version

I could count on the fingers of one hand how many times this year have I been asked “how do I turn more visitors into customers, more orders and more conversions..?”

Strange that in a world where there’s much more pressure than ever before to be more efficient and costs have been cut in all areas of the business that this isn’t happening online.

I know of one large corporate who, in an attempt to cut costs got rid of the evening office cleaners and instead issued staff with cleaning products – but to the very best of my knowledge didn’t try to be more efficient by turning more of their visitors into customers. I know which of these things would have likely had a better impact on the bottom line – not to mention office hygiene!

In the last couple of years we’ve all heard more than enough about “doing more with less”. Usually that’s meant fewer staff, less marketing budget, less time and overall – fewer resources. And this was often accompanied by depressing projections, budget cuts, staffing cuts or if you’re really (un)lucky, management demands for the undeliverable within impossible timeframes! (No, Forsyth is not talking about First Rate here – Ed.)

But it doesn’t always have to be that way. You probably have a pretty “good” website for your organisation – it’s been signed off by the agency, the marketing department, finance and the CEO’s wife – and everyone who gets a say in it is pretty happy with the site.

And many of you have then gone on to solve the first major hurdle, the “we’ve spent all this money on our site but no-one comes to it. The internet doesn’t work for us” – problem through intelligent SEO and/or PPC strategies. And some of you are even looking at bounce rates and exit rates to better understand “where” and more importantly “why” visitors are exiting your website.

From this point there are 3 options to get more revenue from the website:

1. Expand your SEO efforts
2. Improve your PPC programme
3. Or – Start turning more of this traffic into customers. Do Conversion Optimization.

So what is Conversion Optimisation?

So what does it mean? Without being flippant the short version is that it means you find ways to get more customers without spending more on advertising. Or put another way, increasing sales for the same budget spend, along with experimental learning that will benefit all areas of your website.

Essentially it’s about testing different versions of the same page to see which one converts more visitors into sales or newsletter sign-ups or enquiries or whatever the various goals of your website are.

It’s about something as simple as looking at your conversion rate – let’s say it’s 2% – and understanding that if you can increase it to 3% that’s the same net effect as adding 50% to your online marketing budget.

In fact, as your traffic is driven by all your offline activity too, you could argue that it’s the same as adding 50% to your total marketing budget. And you don’t need expensive software or complex tools to do this, the nice folk at Google have created Website Optimizer which is completely free. Obviously, you need to know how to maximise the benefits this tool brings, and how to implement and configure it correctly. We do – and we’d love to help (contact us to have a chat).

Why Should You be Doing Conversion Optimisation?

So you can test different versions of pages again and again and get detailed reporting on what’s working and what’s not. Do you think your website is so unbelievably good that it converts the most amount of traffic it possibly could?

If not, you should be doing conversion optimization. If you honestly think your website is that good, think again.

Unless you’ve been doing conversion optimisation on every page that’s part of every conversion point or funnel then it isn’t that good. I know that whoever built it and designed it probably told you it was, but chances are that it’s not I’m afraid.

To get an idea of how fickle conversion rates can be, take a look at this, one of my favourites for real-life testing examples. It’s amazing to see which variants get the best conversion rates and if you can guess the winner 100% of the time then let me know!

It’s easier to turn more traffic into visitors than to buy more traffic. It’s more efficient, it’s cheaper and frankly it’s just plain sensible.

At the end of the day it doesn’t matter whether your marketing department like your website or not, and it doesn’t matter how clever your creative agency is, or how well the site design matches the CEO’s curtains. Instead it’s about ensuring that visitors get everything they need from your site – and that as many as possible convert to customers.

Conversion Design – How to Get Started

The staff in your call centre know what your customers want, your sales people and account managers do too – they talk to your customers and potential customers more than anyone. But were they involved in the website design?

Or let’s turn the question around: Did the people who designed your site ever go out and try to sell your product/service? If they didn’t, then how did they know what the potential customer objections are or indeed what your customers or prospects want?

Your customers are a particular group of people with a particular requirement, they’re not “everybody” and understanding them is an important step in getting more out of your website. This is one of the first steps in starting the conversion optimisation process.

Getting more customers without spending more on advertising is not an instant fix but it has the potential to make a huge difference to your business. If you want to find out more about this, drop me a line (forsyth @ firstrate.co.nz).

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