http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog The Source, featuring Daily Videos on SEO, PPC, Conversion and E-Mail Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:46:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/wildcard-friday-thenextweb-coms-super-bowl-sentiment-infographic.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/wildcard-friday-thenextweb-coms-super-bowl-sentiment-infographic.html#comments Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:46:28 +0000 Joe http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4501
So in honor of Superbowl XLVI Sunday coming up this weekend. I thought it would interesting to see on a grand scale, what the overall sentiment for this years superbowl will be. I myself, being from New Jersey and Living in Boston for the last several years, I am quite torn with who I want to win. So lets let the masses be the judge for who will be the victor and lets take a look at this infographic, created by thenextweb.com who utilized the social media analytics platform ubervu to create this stunning visual.

Also looking at the sentiment of the conversations taking place, it appears that Brady had more positive support then Manning which in the end helped to give him the edge for the Patriots.

Next, thenextweb.com looked at overall team mentions. And although the patriots have a slight edge in mentions, the giants are winning in retweets. I would dare to see the race is pretty close and could come down to game day to pick a definitive winner on this front.

So in conclusion, thenextweb.com has decided to go with the patriots based off the numbers. But if these numbers hold any merit it should pan out to be a great game based off the stunning fan base for both teams. I hope this info graphic from thenextweb.com and their utilization of the ubervu platform has been entertaining, and perhaps it gave you an idea for an info graphic for your own marketing campaign.

So take care everyone, have a safe and happy super bowl weekend. And if your favorite team isnt playing this weekend, better luck next year. ]]>

]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/wildcard-friday-thenextweb-coms-super-bowl-sentiment-infographic.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/email-thursday-christmas-is-over-now-what.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/email-thursday-christmas-is-over-now-what.html#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:25:16 +0000 Tim G http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4495
But there are nine other great months to engage subscribers, strengthen customer relationships, and accumulate sales.

So how can you make the most out of the entire year? Here are three easy-to-use tips.

One way to keep your emails relevant and timely is to tie your campaign in with holidays throughout the year.

The mention of holidays in your subject line (or offering a coupon code in light of a holiday) will not only produce interest from readers, but it also helps maintain a festive vibe which encourages readers to open and read an email.

Some obvious examples of great holidays for email are Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and July 4.

So what‘s a holiday? A holiday is a date that somebody (or group of people) attached a significance to.

What is to prevent you from creating your own holiday, and promote it through email?

Creating your own holiday is especially relevant to lifestyle-driven companies. For example, if you own a bike shop; you can use email to promote a “Welcome Back, Spring Day” to draw customers at the beginning of April. Is this a real holiday? No? But is this relevant to people who ride bikes? Yes!

So the key is to find a thread of significance with your readers through particular times of year.

Relevance – closely tied with brand and product offerings

Leverage Holidays in Email Campaigns

• Who?
  You and your email subscribers
• When?
  Any time that makes sense for your marketing strategy
• Why?
  Continually find relevance with subscribers’ lives and interests

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]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/email-thursday-christmas-is-over-now-what.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-advance-bounce-rate-math.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-advance-bounce-rate-math.html#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:58:17 +0000 Nik http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4482
Alright, let’s start with the core numbers. Here, we’re analyzing a section of a mythical site – a section would be something like “all product pages” – or every page in a particular category of a site. The numbers we’re working with are: 90,000 visits, 60,000 that bounced, 15,000 total add to carts, 1,000 sale actions – and finally, a resulting $10,000,000 in revenue from this activity. We’re going to move quickly, so keep up!

Those numbers already start telling us a story. When we analyze the entire funnel – 67% of visitors are bouncing, which is higher than 50% - keep that in mind, because the fact that it’s over 50% is really important in terms of what that will tell us in the end for our investment analysis. The rest of the math is simple, 17% of visitors added to cart, and then they continue to reduce like a fine sauce into the 1% of visitors that made a purchase. That’s a lot of tail off and loss through the funnel!

So what I find interesting is when you analyze a funnel as if there were no bounces at all. So we saw in the last slide that 67% of visitors bounce – well here, we’re looking at the 33% that didn’t bounce. This tells you so much about how well you do when a visitor finds both the entry page, and the site-wide experience worthy of their time. Here, if a person liked what they saw on the entry page, and they were interested in what the rest of the site may offer, they were very highly inclined to make a purchase. 50% of people who engaged the site and did not bounce, ended up adding to cart! Furthermore, the conversion rate with these non-bouncers was 3%!

As a result, the average value per visit of a bouncer versus a non-bouncer is a 3-fold difference. A visitor, on average, contributed $111.11 per visit after all the fallout possibilities play out – the 67% that bounce, the 83% that don’t add to cart, the 99% that didn’t make a purchase. By contrast, when a visitor engaged the site and didn’t bounce, their value was over $300 at $333.33. That’s a huge difference! That’s something to write home about. It starts to make you think about how much more impactful your site would be if you reduced your bounce rate. Well… let’s make some calculations to answer that conundrum!

So this is what I find to be a magical finding. In the case that we’re looking at, the bounce rate was 67% - which is over 50%. As a result, when you compare the impact of 1 of 3 options: either increasing conversion rate by 15%, or increasing average order value by 15%, or decreasing bounce rate by 15% - which one do you think would make you more money? Bounce rate seems like it’s so early in the funnel, that it should be a no-brainer – decrease in bounce rate would have the lowest impact.

Wrong! The first time I got these results, I was a bit shocked as well. In this scenario of a 67% bounce rate, it is nearly twice as impactful to your revenue when you decrease bounce rate by 15% versus increasing conversion rates by 15%.

Here’s the math. For increasing conversion rates by 15%, you simply multiply the revenue currently earned by 15% - which is $10,000,000 times 15%, resulting in a sum of $1,500,000. Not bad! For decreasing bounce rates by 15%, you calculate how many new non-bouncers you would have – 15% of the 67% that originally would have bounced – so 15% of 60,000 visitors, which equals 9,000 new non-bouncers. Each non-bouncer adds $333.33 in revenue – so by multiplying 9,000 against $333.33, you net an additional $3,000,000! Pretty, pretty good.

When doing your math, you’ll almost always be shocked by how much money can be made by investing in conversion optimization. Just remember, that you’ll build a deeper understanding of impact as you test and learn over time.

Does this work the same all the time? Nope. Bounce rate was a more significant factor because the bounce rate was above 50% to start with. If you started with a bounce rate of 33% - so in the same scenario, there were 30,000 of the 90,000 visits resulting in bounces – then your math would change. In that case, the impact of decreasing bounce rates by 15% would only be $750,000, while an increase in conversion rates would continue to be $1,500,000. Then again, the non-bounce in this situation is only $166.67, compared to the $333.33 from our earlier example.

Again, bounce rate is a compass, its value indicates a lot – it is not by any means the most valuable lever for revenue improvement every time around. If you need a quick rule of thumb though, follow this rule: “If your bounce rate is above 50%, a 5% decrease in bounce rate is more valuable that a 5% increase in conversion rates”. ]]>

]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-advance-bounce-rate-math.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/ppc-tuesday-superbowl-ppc-strategy.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/ppc-tuesday-superbowl-ppc-strategy.html#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:16:21 +0000 Brian http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4473
Oh wait there is a football game? I was thinking of something else.

The hype and anticipation surrounding the Super Bowl each year isn’t just for the big game (although in the Northeast there is most likely more excitement than in other parts of the country.) It is also for the commercials that play during the event. According to Nielsen, 51% of people enjoy watching the Super Bowl ads more than the game itself. Advertisers have an increasing pressure to not only provide memorable and innovative commercials, but also to find new ways to connect with the consumer outside of the television platform, even after the game is over.

The information in the chart here provided by Kantar Media proves this to be the trend. According to this Super Bowl ads are revealing a growing preference for 60 second commercials. As a result the total amount of time that ads play throughout the course of the game has increased. As a result less spots are available in which to advertise, which has further driven up the costs to over the $200 million dollar mark in the past 3 years.

This coupled with the rising use of social media and mobile devices throughout the game in the form of Facebook status update and Twitter posts has resulted in more of an opportunity to come up with a PPC strategy to capture some of this demand.

Some ideas therefore for how to advertise your brand during this highly visible time:

1. Come up with a Mobile PPC campaign. Mobile continues to be one of the fastest growing and most popular media channels. Creating campaigns for non-branded and branded keywords related to your competitors Super Bowl ads targeted to Droid, iPhone and iPad/Kindle devices are a good way to increase your visibility while minimizing your spend.
2. The second step would be to explore the use of serving your ads on multiple options, be it a sponsored ad on YouTube or Tweet on Twitter. These can be instances in which you can bring in the most amount of traffic due to the millions of dollars spent by competitors to in essence get your name out there in association with their brand.
3. The third step is to come up with a “game plan” if you will to exclude your name from searches from your competitor as well as include it. A great example of this is the Home Away Test Baby ad from a couple years ago and last years Groupon disaster. In both these cases, having a negative keyword strategy in place to not show up for these searches is something to keep in mind.
4. Lastly as quickly as you turned on these campaigns, don’t let it run no longer than 1-2 days after the big game. This is a very short window of opportunity in which to gauge performance. It’s best to allocate funds you set aside from this campaign to allocate to your branded and non-branded campaigns to build up the awareness of your brand and capture as many clicks and conversions as possible from those searching for your competitors ads. This could be something if planned and executed correctly that will result in pennies being spent by you compared to the millions spent by your competitors to in essence get the same result.

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]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/ppc-tuesday-superbowl-ppc-strategy.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/seo-monday-pinterest-your-way-to-better-seo.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/seo-monday-pinterest-your-way-to-better-seo.html#comments Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:44:35 +0000 Elizabeth http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4470

If you’re a product-based e-commerce store, it’s probably pretty obvious that you should be adding pictures of your products on Pinterest. Make sure your photography is professional-looking so your customers are intrigued and click through to your store.

Pinterest can also act as a great way to introduce your customers to your team. Create a section with pictures and names of your customer service representatives so they know who they’re talking to when they call in for help.

Get your customers involved and get reviews at the same time by having buyers send in pictures of themselves using your product.

Are you getting ready to launch a new product or product line? Before everything is set in stone, use Pinterest to test it out. Get real feedback from customers.

Create a new contest weekly or monthly to get new customers excited about your products and build store loyalty.

There are a few good things to keep in mind in order for Pinterest to add true SEO value to your company. People need to re-pin you and credit your site as the original for back-linking opportunities to work. Make sure your images on your Pinterest link back to your website and not an image file, and also make sure you add prices to let people know that your products are in fact, for sale. And finally, add Pin It buttons to your webpages that have important products and/or valuable information so people can share easily. Since Pinterest is a relatively new social media, there will certainly be changes in the following months, but we’ll keep you updated with how all of it unfolds. ]]>

]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/seo-monday-pinterest-your-way-to-better-seo.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/wildcard-friday-update-to-top-search-queries-data-in-google-webmaster-tools.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/wildcard-friday-update-to-top-search-queries-data-in-google-webmaster-tools.html#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:04:43 +0000 Scott C http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4465
To find the Top Queries area in Webmaster Tools, click the link on the left side titled “Your Site on the Web”. Once you’ve clicked this, you should see the menu expand where you can click on “Search Queries” to find the data.

With the top queries window open, you should see something similar to what is showing on this slide, where you’ll have a list of top keywords going down the left hand column and other metrics to the right. The metrics are estimates that Google provides which include impressions, clicks, click-through rate, and average position (which is highlighted on the screen).

You can set the time period of the data to whatever you’d like. For the purpose of this experiment, I’ve set it to a time span of 4 weeks.

To see exactly how accurate Google’s top query report currently is, I took a sample list of the top 7 keywords for a site. Using Webmaster Tool’s average rank over the period of 4 weeks, I recorded what was reported by Google compared to what the actual average was over the same time span. It’s important to note that exact rank can never truly be accurate basedon many variables including location, however our in-house metrics use various data centers throughout the country to capture data, which helps ensure as much accuracy as possible.

As you can see, 3 of the 7 were fairly accurate, being within one position or less than the actual average rank. This is pretty impressive.

However, looking at some of the other keywords, the difference between Google’s average and the actual average was a little wider, being greater than 1 position while still being less than 3 positions. Although this may seem fairly close, it’s important to keep in mind that in an example like Keyword 3, where Google reports it at 4.6 and the actual is 1.7, it is a big difference in terms of CTR, and having a more accurate average would be more helpful. Even more troubling is Keyword 7, where Google reports and average of 13, while the actual average was around 2…a huge difference in being on Page 2 versus the 2nd position on Page 1 of search results. Having inaccurate data like this can cause good keywords to be overlooked or vice versa, which can also lead to bad SEO decision making.

Overall, we’re very pleased with Google’s decision to make a continued effort to improve the accuracy of their Webmaster Tools data. It’s important to note that the update to provide more accurate average has just recently rolled out, so it may be the case that if we were to do the same experiment a month from now, we’d find more averages within 1 position or less of the actual average. ]]>

]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/wildcard-friday-update-to-top-search-queries-data-in-google-webmaster-tools.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/email-thursday-social-sharing-in-email.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/email-thursday-social-sharing-in-email.html#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:39:02 +0000 Kelly http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4459
51.9% of people who use social sharing in their emails only use one icon. 40% of those include two icons. Marketers see this as an improvement – but according to Econsultancy this number is still low when compared to incredibly high performance of newsletters that include social sharing icons.

Emails that include those buttons have a 115% higher click through rate than emails that do not include social icons. Econsultancy also reports that last June, offering at least 3 social options led to 55% higher CTR and an email with one offering had just a 30% higher CTR than an email without any sharing options.

Where should you place social sharing tags? You can really place them anywhere, but the most common place is at the top or bottom of your message.

So how do you add social sharing buttons to your emails? Each ESP is different. At Exclusive Concepts we use Bronto, and it is very easy to add Twitter and Facebook and Linkedin icons to our emails. You simply click on the icon you would like to add in the build bar in the editor. If you have a different ESP I’m sure it’s just as simple. ]]>

]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/email-thursday-social-sharing-in-email.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-landing-page-optimization.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-landing-page-optimization.html#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:37:29 +0000 Dan G http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4456
If you don’t know what landing pages are, basically they’re the first page a visitor sees when visiting your site.  More often than not, the home page is the usually a visitor’s landing page, but some websites are frequently adding special landing pages that allow visitors to skip information that doesn’t interest them and might focus on a certain product or certain promotion.

Landing pages can be used to direct customers to specific pages on your site that are of interest to them.  You should use landing pages when you know the visitor to your site is after something specific that normally would take several clicks to reach their desired destination.  Take a look at your traffic analytics to see how the majority of your visitors are entering your site. For example, a good portion of your traffic could be coming from on an ad for a product you sell.  They most likely don’t want to spend 10 minutes navigating through your site just to find the product in the ad they clicked on, so a landing page can help them find what they’re after faster.

How to Measure Landing Page Success:

Like other pages on your website, you should evaluate the success of your landing page. Ideally, you want visitors to your site to make a purchase.  A successful landing page should result in more purchases.

You can measure the success of your landing page by dividing the number of people who make a purchase into the number of visitors to your site.  The result is your conversion rate.  A good lead generation conversion rate falls around 3-5%, with a typical ecommerce rate being 1-2%.

What Makes an Effective Landing Page? –you might ask

The more in tune your landing page is with the source your visitor found your site from, the higher your conversion rate will be. You want your landing page to direct customers to a page with relevant information, making the process of finding what they want on your site as easy as possible.

If your ad that the visitor clicks on to get to your website features a particular product or brand, it’s a good idea to have the landing page also feature that particular product or brand.  If you fail to match the landing page with the intended destination of the visitor, you conversion rates could dramatically decline.There are four key points in making an effective landing page:

1.  Recognition - Your customer should immediately find what they were looking for and they should recognize that the page they were directed to matches the ad that they clicked on.
2. Credibility - Your page must look legitimate.  The visitor should feel secure making a purchase or submitting personal information after seeing your landing page.
3. Persuasiveness - Your landing page should seal the deal and convince the visitor that they need your product or that your service is of value to them.
4. Action - The landing page should highlight some action the visitor can take now that they’ve reached their destination, like making a purchase.

  So there you have it. Now you know a little more about landing pages and their optimization. Is there any assistance you might want for your website? Are you overwhelmed, and maybe want to delegate the analyzation and testing of your site to come up with some new strategies and changes for your site? If so, please consider utilizing our testing program. ]]>

]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/conversion-wednesday-landing-page-optimization.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/ppc-tuesday-impression-share-metrics-update.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/ppc-tuesday-impression-share-metrics-update.html#comments Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:00:15 +0000 Kevin http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4453
In the past, Google has provided Impression Share metrics on a campaign level. These metrics received positive feedback from advertisers as it allowed them to see the percentage of impressions received by your campaign divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive. This is important as it gives you a pulse of where you are in the landscape with your competitors.

Advertisers were then allowed to add additional columns for further insight. Two of these columns allowed you to see where you were losing impression share for your campaign. There are two ways to see a campaign’s lost impression share. The first is lost impression share based on budget. The second is lost impression share based on rank. Advertisers were then able to determine whether or not to raise their campaign budget or keyword bids in order to further capitalize on successful campaigns.

The last column that can be viewed is the exact impression share. This allows you to see the percentage of impressions your ad could have shown for search terms that match your keywords exactly. If this percentage is low you can utilize Search Query reports in order to examine where you may be missing opportunities.

If this is something new to you and you would like to view these metrics for your campaigns you can do this by selecting the Columns drop down on the campaign view. You will then want to select the Competitive Metrics option and then Add the desired columns that you wish to see.

In an effort to continually improve the AdWords reporting and analytics for advertisers, Google is making Impression Share metrics available at the Ad Group level.

Advertisers will now be able to add three new impression share columns within their Ad Group view; Impression Share, Lost impression share based on rank, and exact match impression share. The only one not at this level is lost impression share based on budget as this is determined at the campaign level.

This will allow advertisers to identify further opportunity for successful ad groups in their AdWords campaigns. Using these metrics you can adjust bids to be more aggressive and capture more of the impression share as well as ensure your keywords are truly in line with searches.

These additional columns will begin to be rolled out to all advertisers on January 30th. At that time you will simply need to select from the Columns drop down the Competitive metrics similar to the campaign view described on the last slide.

We have used the campaign level impression share metrics to help guide our recommendations for strategic budget increases within the market in order to increase the overall ROAS.

At Exclusive Concepts we see this reporting update as an opportunity to identify on an ad group level whether to invest more within that category or not. If the impression share is low we now have the ability to determine if it is a result of rank or if the keywords need to reviewed. Any time we are able to gain clarity on a more granular level it allows better decisions to be made for our clients in order to ensure success and growth.

It is also important to note that with this update, Google is planning on updating the campaign level statistics as well. As a result they will be updating the campaign level impression share back to May 2011. If advertisers wish to keep a record of pre-May 2011 campaign impression share it is recommended to run a report before the January 30th rollout. ]]>

]]> http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/ppc-tuesday-impression-share-metrics-update.html/feed 0 http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/seo-monday-google-makes-an-update.html http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/seo-monday-google-makes-an-update.html#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:26:07 +0000 Rebecca http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/?p=4446
So you’re an e-commerce store, and you probably don’t post ads and are wondering how this will affect you. Google doesn’t clearly state how they determine if an image is an ad, but based on some changes we’ve recently seen with clients I don’t believe this update is exclusive to advertisements. Posting an excessively large image at the top of your page could be read as spam, especially if all content and products are pushed below the fold. If you’ve seen ranking impacted by this update, try removing or reducing the size of the image you placed on that category page. Not sure how many people can see the content on your site? Google recommends you use their Browser Size tool.

If you’re thinking you might have been penalized by this update and make site changes, you’re not immediately out of hot water. Google points out that, as with any other update, when your site is reevaluated depends on how quickly they are able to re-crawl and process pages from your site. This can take several weeks, as speed depends on the number of pages on your site and how efficiently Googlebot can crawl the content (Google Search Blog ). ]]>

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