How > Score Driven Development

Targeting a visitors on your search or social page with the right message and content requires you understand their intentions in getting there. While identifying these intentions and the associated actions is key to generating leads – we take search based targeting to the next level. Our unique quality score driven approach to ad and landing page development uses search and recommendation engines to judge core relevance and topic indicators. This focus means that landing pages are developed to ensure that corresponding keywords that are bid on in AdWords always receive top quality scores from Google. Naturally, this means that you get more paid visitors for less money while also getting more organic visitors. Double win!

1 (OPPORTUNITY ANALYSIS) Once we have identified your target clients and marketing objective we establish a strategy to place you in front of the right perspective clients at critical I want-to-know, I want-to-go, I want-to-do, and I want-to-buy moments. Capturing the data needed to target, acquire and grow your paid and organic audiences requires conducting a competitor, gap and keyword analysis. This ensure that any work done and money spent influencing, motivating and driving web traffic is in line with your clearly defined business objectives. It also critically ensures that keywords pursued are under within budget.

2 (KEYWORD MAPPING) Upon completion of the keyword analysis we segment customer search behavior based on interest, expertise and desired outcome. Specifically it means tying each search term (what) to an intention (so what) and conversion action (now what). At this point we are able to tie terms to specific business objective and assign a value to them.

3 (FUNNEL DEVELOPMENT) Once prospective search terms have been identified and categorized into related segments one or more funnel is created. A funnel, simply put, is a series of pages that have a primary objective or outcome which is usually generating an online sale, booking request, phone calls or lead or online form submission. Our team has extensive experience both building and optimizing funnels and abides by the most up to date best practices. These expertise in combination with a robust understanding of your business ensures the user’s experience is both informative, barrier free and optimized for conversion.

4 (LANDING PAGE CREATION) In addition to the funnel a series of landing pages are created to target related search terms. The pages are designed to directly reflect the search term(s) they are related to. This is critical both to ensure that visitors are properly preframed and so that you get an optimal quality score. Quality Score is a number assigned by adwords between 1 and 10 and reflects how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad. Having a high Quality Score critically means that you pay less per click and per conversion!

5 (CREATE SEARCH AND DISPLAY ADS) Once the funnel and landing pages have been put into place search and display ads are created which correspond to the identified keywords. Each Ad is developed and optimized to ensure both a high quality score and conversion rate. Once in place the campaign is complete and ready for testing!

1 (SET A BUDGET) Funnells, when properly designed convert clicks into conversion at the lowest price possible. For this reason setting an upper limit on cost per conversion allows you to maximize the traffic you pay for without risking a negative return on your ad spend. In order to establish conversion rates funnels require testing which means some preliminary spending without a clear projection on funnel performance. While increasing business and brand awareness along with web traffic is useful goals we try to tie all campaign spending to distinct instances of conversion because they directly correlate to a business objective.

2 (TEST & REFINE) Once a budget is set the campaign is launched. With analytics and attribution in place we are now in a position to measure, interpret, and communicate the strategic marketing insights gleaned from the campaign. Constant monitoring of an Adwords campaigns performance is critical moving forward to ensure it is targeting the right people and effectively generating the desired conversions. Search and display ads targeted at keywords are but one of a variety of targeting methods useful to increase sales/conversions for your business. 

3 (EXPAND AUDIENCE) As data accrues in both adwords and analytics it becomes increasingly clear the campaigns effectiveness in reaching demographics. Working backwards from accrued demographics data on successful conversions we are able to both better refine the existing campaigns and define audiences ripe for remarketing (prospective clients that have come through your funnel but did not convert) and affinity audiences (perspective clients similar in demographic and interests to those who successfully converted) that could be targeted based on their interest, geographic location or other targetable feature.

4 (ASSESS AND ATTRIBUTE) In addition to refining the targeted audience we use a variety of tools to asses the performance of the funnel. Conversion optimization requires gathering and analysing the cumulative clickstream data of associated with a funnel. Clickstream data is the aggregate data about which pages visitors view, in what order and how they interact with a given page. The result of the succession of mouse clicks each visitor makes is scrutinized to find barriers to purchase, low converting pages and opportunities for improvement.

5 (OPTIMIZE AND TEST) Once an opportunity is identified from a campaigns click stream data either an a/b or multivariate test is setup to assess if changes can improve the page and/or funnels performance. Once a statistically significant improvement is established the campaign is updated and further tests established to improve a campaign’s performance.

1 (GET BETTER METRICS) While measuring a campaign’s performance is critical it is important to consider the campaigns broader effect in improving brand awareness. While a prospective client may not take immediate action the campaign may nevertheless equip them to pursue an alternative path to purchase. As a consequence it is critical to measure both the direct campaigns results and the broader businesses growth.

2 (REFINE SALES PROCESS) Providing and implementing strategic recommendations requires identifying your unique business objectives, value proposition and available opportunities. While no two business are alike performance based marketing requires certain fundamental process be in place : a trained and scripted sales team, appropriate sales collateral along with a customer relationship management tool are critical to guaranteed results. Ensuring a tight sales funnel and full cycle nurturing is in place is critical to gaining the most value from the online demand created for your service. With these fundamentals in place we identify and focus on clear objectives, so that we have a clear definition of success.

3 (ASSESS BROADER IMPACT) A robust data-driven attribution system is critical to properly asses both a campaigns value and the impact of all touchpoints that lead to a desired outcome. While the path from impression to conversion is critical is must be understood in the broader context of the full customer journey. Insights gleaned from proper tracking across the full customer journey (from first impression to first and subsequent purchases) can be used to inform (1) better customer targeting and ad spend (2) sales and service fulfillment decisions along with (3) service offering and pricing decisions.

4 (ESTABLISH REPORTING PRACTICE) Throughout the entire process of developing and refining campaigns it is critical to document a company evolving marketing presence over time. Without proper documentation it is impossible to disentangle the effect of market forces and day to day business practices from the search marketing efforts. More critically proper documentation allows for appropriate signposting for broader business growth attribution. The obvious importance of this from a strategic perspective cannot be overstated.

5 (REFINE AND REINFORCE SALES PRACTICES) As campaign’s mature the broader goal is to use their insights to inform broader marketing and business development decisions. Success in this respect requires fostering a data-inquisitive culture—one where team members use campaign data to answer key questions and their experience to provide strategic recommendations for testing.