Event at $35, lunch at Maggiano’s is always an enjoyable thing. Today’s American Marketing Association meeting featured a panel discussion collectively promoted as Clicks to Bricks or how to get more sales out of your on-line presence. Nothing earth shattering about this presentation but I did enjoy the quips of panel member Evan LaPointe of Search Discovery and wanted to elaborate on my favorite.
He pointed out that if performance is 90% what happens after the click then why do so many companies hire and fire based on clicks? The reality is that it’s not enough to bring people to the site if you aren’t equipped to convert them. As a matter of fact, a campaign with a high click through and a low conversion could be down right expensive. So perhaps, as Evan pointed out, a great many people are focusing on the wrong metric.
If you’re hiring a SEM (search engine marketing) firm to help send traffic to your site but aren’t working with them (or your design team) to set up appropriate and reciprocating landing pages then you’re wasting your Google dollars. Sending those dollars to Yahoo! and BING isn’t going to improve things if you don’t provide a welcome reception for the traffic when they get there.
Time and again we find that a fantastic-looking site can have a high abandonment rate while a really ugly site with rich, up-to-date content will have great stickiness.Regardless of whether you’re talking about search engines or real-live eyeballs, it’s all about the content. If you’re not taking the time to invest in developing quality content that educates your customer on the value of your product or service then you’re wasting your money paying for paid search.