When it comes to marketing costs, conventional wisdom States that half of all dollars wasted-but it is not possible to determine which half. The online marketing world challenge this adage. “With online marketing, You know what a waste and what is not,” said Bruce Clay, head of Internet marketing firm Bruce Clay Inc.
With the right tools, each site visitor, as well as his actions, can be traced, said Bradley Joe, Marketing Manager with Webmarketing123 company. “You can bind web site conversion (from visitor to customer) directly to the dollar.” That allows companies to determine, for example, the search terms that tend to attract more visitors who actually make a purchase, as opposed to those who only browse the site and leave empty handed.
Of course, before the company can track the visitors on the website, first need to get it there. That’s where search engine optimization, or SEO, in. .. This term refers to a tactic that can be used by companies to improve rankings in the results generated by the major search engines, like Google and Yahoo. It is the key, because some consumers bother looking beyond the first page of results. In fact, 60% of the searches that contained the top three search results, and 90% remain in the top 10, according to a study in 2011 by Optify, a provider of marketing software.
“If you are not on the first page of Google, You really don’t exist,” said Jared Roy, search and the Director of social services with WebTrends, a leading provider of digital marketing analytics tools.
Not surprisingly, peaking in the top search engines require effort, Roy added. “You have to have great content and provide a reason for consumers to come to your page,” he said. It might mean entering whitepapers, promotional or product demonstration videos in your site. “You have to do the math, and ask for what you are willing to pay for the cost of acquisition (customer).”