Search Engine Marketing: Search Has a New Friend—DRTV

TV spots spice up Orkin’s SEM results

October 2007 By Kate DeBevois

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Crigler says ensuring his company “ultimately gets the traffic regardless of how a potential customer enters the conversion path,” is the key to success for this kind of program. To accomplish this, he secured variations on Orkin’s DRTV campaign URLs that redirected users to the intended Web site to ensure consumers would reach the Orkin landing page despite user mistakes. According to Crigler, this effort paid off with increased conversion rates.

Orkin also added all DRTV-related concepts as keywords and phrases to the SEM campaigns so the Web site is easy to reach, “regardless of whether the customer directly enters one of our unique Web URLs in a browser or starts with their favorite search engine as they respond to DRTV commercials,” Crigler says.

Be a Slave to the Details

On the search display side, Orkin created relevant search engine ranking page ad copy that ties into the DRTV campaign and promotional offer. According to Crigler, the company sees the best conversions when the SEM ad is the same as, or very similar to, the DRTV ad. “Proper alignment across channels will bring a stronger clickthrough rate, more traffic to the site and, ultimately, produce more qualified leads,” he says.

When it comes to integrating SEM and DRTV, paid search is the way to go. The long lead times required to execute an effective natural search strategy prevent it from working well in conjunction with DRTV. Crigler says, “DRTV URLs typically won’t show up organically, thus when people search on these terms, you need to have a paid search ad appear. It is essential to use paid search and to make sure you have an extensive keyword list of DRTV display URLs, ‘buzz’ keywords and brand terms with appropriate messaging.”

He also notes that when using natural search queries on key terms, the organic results may not reflect the DRTV offer or theme, potentially creating a gap in consumers’ expectations. In that case, consumers may not properly associate the DRTV campaign with the search result listing.



Advice for Testing the DRTV/Search Waters

Including immediate and latent conversion, Orkin’s DRTV program currently is “tracking nine conversion funnels and the brand impact on overall company leads,” says Crigler, who worked with multichannel marketing services firm SendTec to create Orkin’s campaign. He emphasizes, “DRTV requires extensive planning, both financial and nonfinancial resources, and the willingness to work hard to make this powerful medium work.”

He advises marketers who are launching a DRTV/SEM campaign to allow three months to plan and execute a campaign. They also should begin the search campaign at least one month prior to the launch of the DRTV campaign. This helps ensure search activity can be properly baselined “so when the DRTV campaign starts, the impact can be measured and understood,” Crigler says.

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