SEM, ROI and the million dollar question

The NMA always provokes an interesting number of points, and the 11.10.07 edition was no different. One article in particular stood out, that about Pricerunner dropping The Search Works in favour of bringing the campaign in-house. The article itself was no great shakes, however it was a quote by Mattias Berg (from Pricerunner) that particularly grabbed my attention

“When bringing The Search Works on board in June 2006, we were hoping for an increase in performance, but we didn’t get that” he said. “The plan was to grow the campaign with an increase in ROI. But what we’ve seen is an increase in spend but not the same in ROI”.

Now I would like to add, we are in no way affiliated with either parties mentioned above, however I would suggest that Mattias Berg’s comment is a comment that is often repeated. Whilst I do not doubt The Search Works experience, nor the level of work in deploying the above campaign, however one thing I would suggest - is that when a campaign is judged on ROI, little is done from a website perspective in order to maximise the ROI, instead relying on the quality of the leads to provide the increase in ROI.

I am not saying this is the case with Pricerunner/The Search Works, however I personally have worked on a number of ‘above, below and online projects’ where the primary aim was to drive traffic and convert online, however whilst full detail has been provided to the planning, buying and deployment of the marketing material, little attention was given to the actual conversion of the customer, whether it be targeted landing pages (for both online/offline), conversion analysis or refinement of the conversion process (companies wanting too much information via initial content - KISS always works best in my opinion).

As such, as customer journeys are not monitored, fallout points not picked up and conversions not analysed (apart from the ROI analysis that many organisations perform as standards), the campaign continues to underdeliver, despite more resource being thrown at it.

At the end of the day I would suggest, the deployment and physical structure of many search campaigns, is eventually going to look fairly similar, and it is therefore the closing of the loop from a conversion perspective that is ultimately going to result in the required increases in ROI.

This is a point that I feel is often missed, and one that can ultimately cost far more (in terms of missed opportunities in the long run than doing the job properly in the first place. E-Gain in particular have always placed significant focus on the campaign from start to finish (and is one that has paid dividends for us and our clients).

Whilst I agree, SEM is always going to be about lead generation, however as search engine marketing /internet marketing agencies move towards a more ROI/conversion based results structure, then ensuring that a campaign is built to convert is going to be more and more important.

1 comment October 26th, 2007