Blogging

It’s a widespread and persistent quandary for marketers, particularly B2B marketers who use white papers as a lead generation incentive for response: on the one hand, if you place a contact form in front of your content, you’ll get a very low conversion rate (on average, 95% of visitors will simply leave the site, and one-third of those who remain will enter bogus information). On the other, if you leave your PDF content open, more people will download your materials but you get no information: who are these visitors? Are they actually reading your content? Printing it? Passing it along? Leaving your content open may actually produce more leads in the long run, but you have no way to measure that with any precision (or even know for sure if that’s the case).

How do you maximize the return on the investment you’ve made not only in producing valuable white papers and other content, but also in driving traffic to it through search engine advertising, email marketing, banner ads and other media? Particularly in this economy, when budgets are being squeezed and marketers are mandated to do more with less, how can you exceed “typical” results and get more than 2-3% of your visitors to raise their hands?

My first post on this topic looked at one possible answer, “post-click marketing” services that extract visitor IP information from your website log files, filter out ISPs and then match remaining network information to various databases to show you, in real time, who is visiting your website and what information they are viewing. Although the term “spyware” is unfair, these services still make some marketers uncomfortable as they are collecting information without the specific consent of visitors. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to get a higher percentage of visitors to voluntarily provide you with their contact information?

A unique new SaaS offering from Vitrium Systems called Docmetrics may do exactly that.

How Docmetrics Works

Once you are set up with their online service (no software to install), you upload your PDFs—white papers, case studies, product data sheets etc.—to your Docmetrics account. Next, create custom Flash forms using Docmetrics tools to collect user information. Insert these forms into your documents; for a white paper, you may want to place the form on page 2 or 3; for content you wouldn’t normally “gate” with a contact form, such as a product sheet, you can put the form at the end of the document. Finally, download your PDFs with the contact forms now inserted and upload these to your website.

When a visitor comes to your site, they can download any PDF without completing an on-site contact form. When they reach the page in your PDF with the Docmetrics Flash form inserted, the form will appear asking them for their contact information. You have the option of requiring completion of the form in order to read the remainder of the document (e.g. with a white paper), or providing a “skip” button on the form so the form submission is voluntary.

On the back end, the Docmetrics system collects all activity information. Typcially, you have no idea what happens to your PDFs once they are downloaded from your website. With Documetics, you get complete tracking—number of times the document was opened, how much time was spent on each page, number of times it was forwarded, printed etc.

Why It’s Cool

The folks at Vitrium claim that Docmetrics dramatically increases—by up to 10X—lead capture rates for normally gated content (such as white papers), while for the first time enabling the collection of contact information from content that isn’t normally gated (e.g. product sheets and case studies).

It also, as noted above, provides activity statistics on PDF content to help marketers improve their offerings. If white paper A has a much higher pass-along rate than white paper B, and gets printed more often, and users on average spend more time with it, then…develop more content like white paper A. That kind of data has just not previously been available for PDF content.

I’m still at the stage of working with selected clients to test this technology, so I can’t vouch for the increase in lead capture rates—though I plan to write a follow-up post once I have that data. For now, it’s sufficient to note that if the increase in conversion rate is even 20% of what Vitrium claims, the product will pay for itself. If Docmetrics provides half the increase in conversion rate claimed, it will make you a rock star with your boss or client.

What to Watch Out For

There really doesn’t appear to be much in the way of a downside to this service. It is possible that your PDFs may not display properly for prospects using older versions of Flash, although 1) this should affect only about 5% of viewers according to Vitrium, and 2) the next release, planned for February, will resolve this problem. Docmetrics offers a free trial, so it’s easy to test drive the software and draw your own conclusions.

Pricing

Monthly fees start at $100 and are based on the number of PDF documents tracked. Contact Vitrium to get more exact pricing for your situation.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Excerpt from:
Getting More Out of Each Click, Part 2: Docmetrics

MarketingSherpa just published a short article, Banner Ad Size and Click Rate: Bigger a Bit Better, But It’s Clicks that Count, that includes this chart:

Three observations stand out:

1) The data haven’t changed much since last year, when it was reported here that “The average CTR for banner ads is roughly 0.25%, with a reported range of 0.17% to 0.40%.”

2) Click-through rates are pathetic regardless of ad size, so don’t use CTR as the primary metric for evaluating banner advertising. In the words of MarketingSherpa, “Online ads are branding tools. Direct clicks are simply a happy byproduct.” Banner advertising is most commonly sold on a CPM basis (and with CTR’s like that, it’s no wonder). CPMs on B2B publisher sites typically range anywhere from $30 t0 $120, meaning that a banner advertiser is paying $15-$60 per click based on the average CTR of 0.21%.

3) The best response rates come from 300×250 ads, which are typically positioned in the top right corner of a web page—no suprise, as that is generally considered the most prime real estate on any web page. Both the 728×90 and 468×60 horizontal banners are typically used at the top of a web page, but notice the significant discrepancy in CTR; when buying real estate at the top of a page, size clearly matters. The remaining ad sizes shown in the chart are skyscraper ads, most commonly positioned on the right and left sides of page content well below the top of page, often below the fold. Interestingly, size doesn’t seem to matter much on skyscrapers.

Conversion rates for B2B ads continue to average about 2.8%. That means, on average, you’d need 17,000 impressions to generate one lead—at an average cost of $1,258! So again: banner ads are branding, not revenue or lead generation. They may very well have a role to play in your marketing mix, but it’s important to understand what that role is.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Go here to read the rest:
Average CTR for Banner Ads - New Data

Which types of online advertising provide the highest ROI? Who’s really clicking on your PPC ads? Why do PPC costs keep rising? How can you convert more clickers into buyers? Are Web 2.0 technologies now mainstream?

Learn these answers and more from this collection of blog posts and articles, some of the best reporting on online research topics so far this year.

Search Engine Performance Report: ROI up 13% in Q4 07, 97% of Additional Spend Goes to Google by Efficient Frontier

It’s hardly a shock that Google dominates search marketing budgets, but it is somewhat surprising, as this post reports, that the 800-pound gorilla continues to grow at the expense of competitors with higher ROI increases.

Online Marketers See High ROI from SEO by Marketing Pilgrim

Blogger, SEO expert and PR pro Janet Meiners reports on an MarketingSherpa study detailing the growth in paid search and organic search engine optimization. Read her post to discover which types of online advertising get a thumbs up—and which are losing favor with interactive marketers.

Put current events in context with news search engine Silobreaker by Pandia Search Engine News

Check out this review of research tool Silobreaker, “a different news search service (which) aims to deliver meaning and relevance, not just aggregate and rank news…by providing relational analysis and explanatory graphics to give you contextual insight into news stories and current events.” Though acknowledging some problems, Pandia calls it an “amazing resource.”

Who’s really clicking? by iMedia Connection

Sandeep Krishnamurthy, Professor of Marketing and E-Commerce at the University of Washington, paints a bleak picture of the future of PPC advertising—then gets blasted for it in the Comments by some fairly high-profile sources. My take is that he does miss the distinction between B2B abd B2C here (PPC ads are very productive, especially for software and computer hardware products) but he’s absolutely correct that search advertisers often underappreciate the value of branding and PR to enhance PPC results.

Eyeing Prices as Search Keeps Growing by eMarketer

This article summarizes a recent SEMPO study detailing “multiple reasons for SEM spending growth, including advertiser demand, rising keyword and pay-per-click campaign costs, small-to-midsized business SEM use and increased behavioral and demographic targeting.” Search marketing is also taking money away from other advertising and PR programs. The question now is…read the article!

The Main Factor Necessary to Convert Visitors to Customers by Marketing Pilgrim

In another enlightening post from Marketing Pilgrim, Internet marketer and online entrepreneur Greg Howlett reports that the average conversion rate for an online retailer is 2.5%—then explains how leaders like Office Depot, QVC and Lands’ End are converting at a 16-20% rate.

Google Reveals CTR Average by Industry by Shimon Sandler

This post uses Google data to show the average conversion rates for a few different industries. I was most interested in learning that the average SEM conversion rate for B2B technology companies is 2.8%. Whew! Most of my clients are comfortably above that level.

First Page Listings On Google Even More Important by AccuraCast

If you had any doubt about the importance of SEO, these research results should eliminate them. Based on study from Jupiter Research, four out of ten searchers don’t venture beyond the first page of results when searching, and a quarter look at only the top half of page one.

OMG! UM Finds Web 2.0 Breeding Consumers 2.0, Social Media Attains Critical Mass by Online Media Daily

MediaPost editor Joe Mandese reports on a Universal McCann study showing that “Text messaging, blogging and social networking have reached critical mass, with more than half of adults now relying on at least one of these so-called Web 2.0 platforms for communicating with friends, family, or colleagues on a regular basis…The research (also) finds that among digital media’s bleeding edge - adults 18-34 - social media now is the dominant form of personal communication media,” among other interesting findings.

Direct sales, branding primary SEM objectives: SEMPO survey by DMNews

Ellen Keohane highlights findings from a SEMPO study showing how marketing budgets are shifting, what marketers think of the branding value of search engine marketing, and how they feel about experimenting with new forms of media.

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Search Engine Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So far) - Social Media Optimization, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Blogging for Business, Part 1

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Read more from the original source:
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Web Marketing Research, Part 1

As an update to the What Recession? post here in May, here are the latest figures. U.S. GDP grew 1.9% in the second quarter, so once again, we are not technically in a recession. On the other hand, the overall unemployment rate spiked upward to 5.7%; not catastrophic, but clearly disturbing.

Still, these two numbers taken together may signal a positive trend. Second quarter GDP growth increased over the first quarter, which had in turn increased over the fourth quarter of 2007. And the last time the unemployment rate was this high was…March, 2004—well after the end of the last recession. In other words, the unemployment rate tends to be a lagging indicator. The fact that the jobless rate is now at a peak, while GDP growth is accelerating, may signal the end of a relatively modest recession. Of course, the policy choices of the new administration after November could swing things in either direction.

But for marketers, at least one measure—the MarketingSherpa Career Classifieds—shows no sign of a downturn. Here are the updated weekly figures over the last 90 days:

As pointed out in the May post, if we’re really in a recession, the blue line in the graph above should be plunging “while the purple line shoots skyward—which is exactly what happened back in 2000. That clearly isn’t happening today.”

Again, it’s only one indicator, and the current sunny outlook for marketers could cloud up in a hurry if the Fed gets overzealous in fighting inflation, or taxes are increased, or any of a number of other things happen. But the fact that that marketers, usually among the first crewmembers to be thrown overboard in an economic tempest, apparently aren’t getting tossed to the sharks in droves is still news to be celebrated.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Read the original post:
For Marketers, What Recession? Part 2