SEO News

What insights can come from branded keyword traffic?

Branded keyword phrases indicate brand equity and customer loyalty. This traffic type may have purchased from the retailer in the past and has established trust and confidence.  

Can you use the insights from branded traffic to improve site performance? 

No. Due to the loyalty element this traffic type will jump the digital hurdles a retailer throws at them. If content is hard to find or missing, this traffic type will make the extra effort to find what they are looking for and remain true to the retailer.  

This is why conversion rates are always higher with branded traffic vs unbranded traffic. Branded traffic masks the issues.  

The performance of branded traffic is not a true indication of how effective your site is at converting and is why as part of the analytical review, branded traffic should be partitioned.

Another source of branded traffic comes in the form of volume spikes as a result of campaign activity. This type of branded traffic is generally not a customer, and potentially less loyal, so it pays to prepare in advance for campaigns to reduce the incidence of branded traffic spikes.  

Poorly converting branded traffic resulting from a campaign tells the retailer nothing. Build campaigns with relevant landing pages and deliver a keyword driven call to action, or create a campaign tile clearly situated on the home page to quickly move branded traffic to the relevant next step.  

Keyword driven campaigns are effective because it promotes the use of the site search if nothing is displayed on the home page. These tactics helps to provide an accurate measure of how the campaign impacted the business but doesn’t happen often enough resulting in a high influx of branded traffic landing on the home page with an even higher bounce rate.  

Not only does this approach provide greater transparency in the analytics, it bolsters the effectiveness of campaigns.

What insights can come from unbranded keyword traffic?

Defines purpose

Unbranded traffic defines a person’s purpose and buying intent. It’s very clear what a person wants when he/she types “Apple iPod Nano” into Google. 

No loyalty

This traffic type is not loyal to a retailer and has expectations far higher than a branded traffic type. Trust and confidence must be built with unbranded traffic types as well as delivering content to satisfy his/her buying process.  

If the needs of an unbranded traffic type are not met and the experience is below expectation, they will leave.  The only good news coming from this is the retailer has data to understand what went wrong.  

This is good news only if the analytics is installed properly, the retailer has an analytical specialist who can interpret this data, and the retailer has a culture of continuous improvement.

The behaviour of the unbranded traffic type is the true indicator of a site’s effectiveness.

Defines where a person is at in his/her own buying stage

Caution: not all unbranded traffic is created equal. Unbranded keywords provide the retailer with an indication of where the person is at in his/her buying stage:

• Early stage buying is information-gathering mode An individual is detail oriented and wants to learn more about the product features, and product options to fulfill a need (example: “MP3 players”)
• Middle to late stage buying. An individual is closer to buying and is seeking other key content elements to satisfy their shifting needs, such as, testimonials, and customer reviews (example:  “Apple ipods”).
• Late stage buying.  An individual is on the hunt for the best deal, if the product is in stock, returns policy information, freight costs, and when it will arrive at their door (example:  “Apple ipod nano 16 gb yellow”). Don’t scoff at this example the trends coming from Google suggest the incidence of more prescriptive searches is steadily on the rise.   

Think about how you conduct yourself when looking for a product. Your stage of buying will correspond to the phrases you type into Google. The more precise you are in defining your needs in the Google search box, the later the stage of buying you are in. 

The movement from one buying stage to another is not as clear cut and linear as stated above. This is to merely provide an appreciation of how retailers need to think when building a content strategy to convert unbranded traffic types.  

If you follow the impressive body of work conducted by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg you would realise this is tip of the iceberg, but it’s a good start. 

Monitising unbranded keyword traffic

The challenge is recognising and reacting appropriately to unbranded keyword phrases representing the different stages. The world is not full of late stage buyers.  

Global conversion rate still consistently sits below 3% because retailer websites hope to capitalise on branded traffic and late stage buyers. A retailer’s website must react according to an individual’s buying process.   

Start by landing unbranded traffic types on pages aligned to their stage of buying and presenting relevant content at the right time.  

For example someone typing “MP3 player” into Google should land on a page titled “MP3 Players” with benefit driven content about MP3 players.

In addition, customers should be shown options to assist in persuading him/her through to the next intuitive step, such as provide a list of brands, a list of applications (“using this MP3 player for exercise?”), a list of unique features (“do you want video with that?”), list of memory size options, and/or a list of price ranges with strong calls to action.  

Congratulations, you have facilitated the second micro step completed in an unbranded traffic type buying process, the first step was going from the Google results page to the website.  

A retailer may not immediately convert unbranded traffic types in varying stages of buying, however, there is a good chance they will come back when its time to purchase (assuming your pricing strategy is intact).     

Why is it critical to understand and cater to unbranded traffic?

Converting unbranded traffic is the foundation for growth. The plan is to focus more on getting the attention of targeted consumers with specific buying intent via adwords and SEO activities.  

Be conscious of buying stages and deliver a brilliant relevant experience. This is competitive advantage.

Inbound marketing takes the different aspects used in traditional outbound marketing, like email and SEO, and adds this to content marketing, social media and advanced marketing automation technology, to create a complete, measurable system that can consistently bring in more leads and business.

From creating an audience…

This starts with a clear strategy for your content so that it matches what your buyers want at each stage of their buying cycle. By understanding what people want and creating different types of content, you then engage with people more powerfully than with traditional outbound approaches alone.

You start by building up confidence in your potential customers by becoming a thought leader in your industry.

…to attracting buyers

The thought leader approach means connecting with your potential customers online and sharing your knowledge when people are at their own stage of being ready and interested to talk about your particular product or service.

Alongside this, it’s essential to build up a strong and very credible online presence to create trust in your audience. You do this with case studies, customer testimonials and customer reviews. This approach is all about the specific stage your potential buyer is at and what they want.

Inbound marketing: How it works

Inbound marketing combines content marketing, social media and marketing automation to create a complete process and strategy for building audiences and generating leads.

Five steps to effective inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is advanced, but it’s also easy to use and relatively simple to put into place.

To make it work you need to follow a methodology covering all the key aspects:

1. Listen: Research, analysis and marketing segmentation all add up to give you a clear picture of where your customers are.

2. Create: High quality content in the right places targets the demand for your product or service.

3. Engage: Publishing and promoting your strategic online data through social media and internet channels builds a two-way relationship between you and your potential customers.

4. Transform: Lead management, scoring and nurturing transforms these conversations into leads – and leads into customers.

5. Grow: Analysing, repeating and updating the process gives you continuous improvement and results.

Bear these steps in mind as a broad framework for your inbound strategy, which will employ all of the following disciplines:

Content marketing

This is about creating and designing content that people want, based on demand. Don’t just think articles and blog posts. Content should be varied – consider white papers, eguides, webcasts, mobile apps, animations and video.

Did you know that B2B companies with blogs generate 67% more leads per month those without?

The essential thing is to ensure you have a regular flow of high quality content on your website and shared with your social media communities. Build trust and confidence, and prospects will be willing to provide opt-in data, turning them into qualified business leads you can nurture.

Search engine optimisation

And don’t forget the Big G. Search engine optimisation is a natural – and crucial – part of online marketing. By consistently optimising all the content you’re producing to match the online demand for your product, you can boost your search engine rankings and drive more targeted (and more potentially profitable) traffic to your website.

And if you’re still spending a ton on pay-per-click, bear in mind that 70-80% of users ignore paid ads.

Online PR

Online ‘hubs’ are where people go to find information and get up to date with issues in their industry. This type of platform may be a website, a blog, a forum, an industry publication, or a community created through social media.  Whether in the form of online news releases, guest blog posts, discussions or polls, sharing content to appropriate platforms helps to drive the right awareness and traffic to your website.

Here’s one example of a marketing software provider sharing appropriate content with a trusted marketing blogger, who then went on to create his own content around it, giving the company access to his expert audience.

Lead nurturing and marketing automation

Did you know that only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales?

How do you keep your team from wasting time on the wrong ones?

Lead nurturing and marketing automation allow you to match your content with the specific stage your potential buyer is at, whether Awareness ( “It’s all new to me, but I’m interested”) Consideration (“This sounds like something pretty useful”) or Decision (“Now, I’m going to buy, but which provider do I choose?”)

Your website should deliver content tailored to the audience you have generated. Marketing automation uses visitor behaviour to allows you to deliver the right type of content to actively nurture visitors into leads and leads into customers.

Applying technology

To ensuring that inbound marketing works effectively and consistently, you need to make it a strategy that is both repeatable and transparent. You can achieve this by using technology platforms that actually allow you to see, in all your content, what people like most and what drives the highest number of leads and sales.

This technology also lets you view which channels are the most effective in bringing traffic to your website – and which traffic turns into leads and sales.

Don’t let lack of engagement and poor content management be detrimental to your business. The way to reap rewards from inbound marketing is to attract visitors with the good quality content and resources they’re looking for.

Creating loyalty with consumers on mobile devices is a game-changer for the marketing industry. We live in an always-on society where more than 50% of the UK population (and rapidly growing) are accessing the internet on a smart device and these consumers want more from brands they interact with here.

In its recent whitepaper about mobile marketing ORM London, mobile and web specialists, states that we are witnessing a huge change in human behaviour as a result of mobile devices.

A new fast growing group of consumers, that interact and are highly engaged with their mobile, is emerging. As a result businesses that are changing to become mobile-first in their approach are striding ahead to win their loyalty.

Founder and design partner of ORM, Pete Gough, said in the whitepaper:

Marketers can now reach and connect with people in their pockets, at their desks and whilst they are watching the television. This everywhere and anywhere culture is what consumers are expecting.

You can use your analytics to give people what they want, when they want it. This is a great opportunity to connect the dots and follow these consumers across all channels to deliver consistent and relevant messages.

Geodata, mobile payments, social networking, gamification and responsively designed sites are some of the techniques in play with mobile loyalty schemes.

Here are five great ideas for how you can create loyalty with mobile users and ultimately give them what they want: better service, rewards for brand advocacy and, of course, money-off deals.

1. Offers and vouchers, tailored and targeted to the mobile user:

LevelUp, the US based mobile-payments-meets-loyalty program app, is tapping into and delivering what consumers really want – money off deals in a location near them, in real-time.

Using geolocation data the app alerts users to nearby businesses offering discounts to LevelUp customers. The promotions are applied when the consumer users the mobile app to make a payment.

Each purchase made through LevelUp is tracked and customers are automatically rewarded with credits each time they return to their favourite shopping haunts.

2. Location. Context sensitive, time specific, localised search

I want to personally thank the Addison Lee (the London minicab firm) app creator for making a Londoner’s life so much easier.

This smooth, seamless app allows account, cash and credit card customers to ‘hail’ a minicab on-the-go in under a minute is a fantastic example of understanding what its mobile customer wants.

The GPS means there’s no need to type in pick up address (which can be saved) its “find my location” button will find you no matter how lost you are (great for when the pub closes).

It sends an SMS to confirm it’s coming to collect you – and the beauty of this minicab firm is – you don’t have to give them directions to your home.

3. Rewards. Customer lifestyle insight for maximising advocacy:

South African health insurance company, Discovery, hit jackpot when it launched a rewards scheme based on healthy-lifestyle choices. The Discovery Vitality loyalty scheme gives you more points the healthier you are.

If you reach your target weight/fitness you’re given extra credits. Members of the club are rewarded for “good behaviour” with money off deals (healthy foods/healthclubs/airlines), cash back as well as fitness and nutrition support.

The Discovery Vitality app means you can collect, track and utilise points whilst keeping abreast of your health stats, goals on the go.

4. Payments made easy

Innovative mobile payment solutions, currently available on low-value items in places like Pizza Express, may soon be common place on the high street.

A great example of an app enhancing a customer’s experience with a brand is the Pizza Express iphone app powered by PayPal. It works by allowing iPhone users to, claim/redeem vouchers and, pay the bill on a smartphone.

The waiter hands over the bill with a 12-digit code that the customer taps into their PayPal account. The app sends the customer and the restaurant a receipt which you show  to the waiter and you’re good to go. 

5. Free in-store wi-fi:

Luxury London department store, Liberty, is one of many retailers experimenting with free wifi in-store for customers.

Recent research by Google and Nielsen found that shopping searches were twice as likely to be conducted in-store. The report highlights that this is a key opportunity for marketers to reach someone who is already ready and prepped to take action.  

Pete Gough from ORM says:

Retailers shouldn’t be wary of mobile users. I regularly use my phone when I’m shopping. I take pictures of items I’m just about to buy and send them to my wife to ask if she likes them or not. Retailers should focus on how they can use wifi and mobile data to add value to the customer.