E-commerce Link : A Custom Fit
Combat 'customer poaching' with content that drives sales and leads
December 2008 By Jeff Molander
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Search marketing is a double-edged sword; it both gives and takes away in the multichannel environment. As you pour cash into traditional media, a variety of parties leverage search engines to intercept customers en route to your site. They're capitalizing on your offline investments and enticing customers away from the path to purchase online.
Savvy marketers are fighting back by investing in gutsy, new tactics. They're publishing and syndicating customized content. As a result, they're attracting and netting customers. They're dramatically increasing affiliate, e-mail and search program ROI, too. Here's how you can do it on a shoestring.
Problem: Search Is Navigational
Whether you use catalogs, direct mail, call centers or broadcast media, today's Web-savvy customers are more likely to use search engines when they're ready to buy than ever before. That spells trouble in a world where search is a navigational agent. Why? Because it enables everyone, from your affiliates, marketing partners (like comparison shopping engines), competitors, knockoff manufacturers and others, to make a grab for your marketing dollars and customers.
Microsoft's Young-Bean Song recently stated, "The issue we have with navigational search is that ... it completely obliterates the value we're creating from other digital marketing we're doing ... the idea that search is this magical fountain of customer acquisition—in many cases it's not."
Solution: Fight Fire With Fire
Marketers should establish and enforce business rules for affiliates, search agencies and marketing partners to follow, but more is needed to solve the customer poaching issue. It's time to reach beyond comfort zones to net new, incremental customers/leads/sales at a manageable cost. It's time to fight back with custom publishing.
Here's the strategy: Produce and syndicate high-quality, authentic, trusted, emotionally focused content that ultimately drives qualified customers to your Web site and landing pages. Tactically, use new (blogs) and traditional (e-mail) publication and syndication tools.
Getting Feet Wet: Blogs
The fastest way to test a content-based strategy is to partner with other bloggers who need content. If you're not blogging, get started now. Possibly the easiest strategy is to use a free blogging service linked to your front page.
Once you've begun blogging about topics relevant to your product or service niche, it's time to hunt down external bloggers you'll share content with. In return, they'll share content with you. The idea here is to create valuable content for your partners' readers and link back to your content within the context of your story. Make your stories engaging and peppered lightly with keywords relevant to your niche. Do the same for your partners.
Most importantly, when selecting words to link, focus on phrases typical to how customers search for your e-commerce offerings. Search engines approve highly of such relevant use of links and rank everyone's content accordingly. Properly (based on relevance and keyword choice) optimized and linked pages boost both your search engine optimization and paid search rankings.
Paying for Content
Implementing a simple blogging strategy involving content swapping and strategic linking is effective, but combining this with custom publishing is pure dynamite. Affiliates have known this for years. And it's given rise to a black market for links which search engines are forced to address, so beware of "link buying" schemes.
Today, savvy marketers are finding ways to produce and place custom content on the Web that search engines approve of. Some marketers are buying up domains/URLs and building content-rich sites on them. Is it possible to invest in such a tactic on a shoestring or experimental basis? Yes, but be careful of paid content services like ReviewMe and PayPerPost, whose bloggers have been targeted for delisting by search engines.
Operating a handful of your own free-standing, content-rich Web sites sounds daunting, but it's within your grasp and a better investment. Using free software like WordPress is simple, and you can run a handful of blogs on a $4.99-per-month hosting platform. Hire someone tech-savvy to install software, tweak a design template, and you're off and running for a few hundred dollars.
You'll also need an editorial plan for each of your blogs. Remember, you know your product niche—and the needs, desires and curiosities of target customers—better than anyone. Let this drive your content plan, and consider low-cost, work-from-home human resources available to you through services like Elance.
Become the Authority
It's been said that the most powerful sites on the Web today are those that provide aggregated and "filtered" (edited by a human) content—making them authoritative, easy to use and popular. While it's not for novices, it should be considered.
TheIndustryRadar.com is an example of such a site, providing health care industry HR and benefits news and opinions. It's owned by a consulting firm in the same industry and is now positioned as the central point for respected news and information in the industry (and all the linking and search marketing power that goes with it). Operating such a site isn't a trivial venture, but RSS-powered (real simple syndication) technology works behind the scenes to do the heavy lifting. The ROI can be significant.
Leverage Your Content
Using an integrated approach to custom publishing is critical. Any content you own, create regularly or customers create for you (i.e., testimonials, reviews, fan mail) should be leveraged across marketing strategies. An article or video that is being used to send traffic from a strategic blogging partner can be used by affiliates to "presell" or motivate potential customers.
Measure Your Success
Content-focused strategies are effective but not a silver bullet. Create goals, but don't expect instant success. Use your marketing analytics tool's conversion tracking to see increases in the following:
Jeff Molander is CEO of Molander & Associates Inc. He offers advice and education to multichannel business executives seeking better customer acquisition strategies and can be reached at jeff@molanderassoc.com. More on how marketers can drive sales/leads with RSS can be found at www.jeffmolander.com/rss.
Savvy marketers are fighting back by investing in gutsy, new tactics. They're publishing and syndicating customized content. As a result, they're attracting and netting customers. They're dramatically increasing affiliate, e-mail and search program ROI, too. Here's how you can do it on a shoestring.
Problem: Search Is Navigational
Whether you use catalogs, direct mail, call centers or broadcast media, today's Web-savvy customers are more likely to use search engines when they're ready to buy than ever before. That spells trouble in a world where search is a navigational agent. Why? Because it enables everyone, from your affiliates, marketing partners (like comparison shopping engines), competitors, knockoff manufacturers and others, to make a grab for your marketing dollars and customers.
Microsoft's Young-Bean Song recently stated, "The issue we have with navigational search is that ... it completely obliterates the value we're creating from other digital marketing we're doing ... the idea that search is this magical fountain of customer acquisition—in many cases it's not."
Solution: Fight Fire With Fire
Marketers should establish and enforce business rules for affiliates, search agencies and marketing partners to follow, but more is needed to solve the customer poaching issue. It's time to reach beyond comfort zones to net new, incremental customers/leads/sales at a manageable cost. It's time to fight back with custom publishing.
Here's the strategy: Produce and syndicate high-quality, authentic, trusted, emotionally focused content that ultimately drives qualified customers to your Web site and landing pages. Tactically, use new (blogs) and traditional (e-mail) publication and syndication tools.
Getting Feet Wet: Blogs
The fastest way to test a content-based strategy is to partner with other bloggers who need content. If you're not blogging, get started now. Possibly the easiest strategy is to use a free blogging service linked to your front page.
Once you've begun blogging about topics relevant to your product or service niche, it's time to hunt down external bloggers you'll share content with. In return, they'll share content with you. The idea here is to create valuable content for your partners' readers and link back to your content within the context of your story. Make your stories engaging and peppered lightly with keywords relevant to your niche. Do the same for your partners.
Most importantly, when selecting words to link, focus on phrases typical to how customers search for your e-commerce offerings. Search engines approve highly of such relevant use of links and rank everyone's content accordingly. Properly (based on relevance and keyword choice) optimized and linked pages boost both your search engine optimization and paid search rankings.
Paying for Content
Implementing a simple blogging strategy involving content swapping and strategic linking is effective, but combining this with custom publishing is pure dynamite. Affiliates have known this for years. And it's given rise to a black market for links which search engines are forced to address, so beware of "link buying" schemes.
Today, savvy marketers are finding ways to produce and place custom content on the Web that search engines approve of. Some marketers are buying up domains/URLs and building content-rich sites on them. Is it possible to invest in such a tactic on a shoestring or experimental basis? Yes, but be careful of paid content services like ReviewMe and PayPerPost, whose bloggers have been targeted for delisting by search engines.
Operating a handful of your own free-standing, content-rich Web sites sounds daunting, but it's within your grasp and a better investment. Using free software like WordPress is simple, and you can run a handful of blogs on a $4.99-per-month hosting platform. Hire someone tech-savvy to install software, tweak a design template, and you're off and running for a few hundred dollars.
You'll also need an editorial plan for each of your blogs. Remember, you know your product niche—and the needs, desires and curiosities of target customers—better than anyone. Let this drive your content plan, and consider low-cost, work-from-home human resources available to you through services like Elance.
Become the Authority
It's been said that the most powerful sites on the Web today are those that provide aggregated and "filtered" (edited by a human) content—making them authoritative, easy to use and popular. While it's not for novices, it should be considered.
TheIndustryRadar.com is an example of such a site, providing health care industry HR and benefits news and opinions. It's owned by a consulting firm in the same industry and is now positioned as the central point for respected news and information in the industry (and all the linking and search marketing power that goes with it). Operating such a site isn't a trivial venture, but RSS-powered (real simple syndication) technology works behind the scenes to do the heavy lifting. The ROI can be significant.
Leverage Your Content
Using an integrated approach to custom publishing is critical. Any content you own, create regularly or customers create for you (i.e., testimonials, reviews, fan mail) should be leveraged across marketing strategies. An article or video that is being used to send traffic from a strategic blogging partner can be used by affiliates to "presell" or motivate potential customers.
Measure Your Success
Content-focused strategies are effective but not a silver bullet. Create goals, but don't expect instant success. Use your marketing analytics tool's conversion tracking to see increases in the following:
- Natural search sales and/or lead conversions
- Paid search sales/lead conversions
- Sales and leads coming from your blogs and those coming from marketing partners
- Google Toolbar helps visualize improved Web page PR scoring (relevancy that powers SEO and paid search placement).
- Google Alerts tracks increased placement/mentions and reputation in the blogosphere.
Jeff Molander is CEO of Molander & Associates Inc. He offers advice and education to multichannel business executives seeking better customer acquisition strategies and can be reached at jeff@molanderassoc.com. More on how marketers can drive sales/leads with RSS can be found at www.jeffmolander.com/rss.
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