New Tool For Contextual Marketing Released

Digital marketing service provider Coremetrics has just released Coremetrics 2008, a product designed to help marketers with their contextual marketing. The product allows businesses to accurately target the most invaluable customer segments using a variety of techniques rather than just using behavioral targeting which doesn’t give the whole picture.

Brian Tomz, director of product strategy at Coremetrics said, “The strategy here is to allow businesses to increase conversions by more accurately targeting the most valuable customer sectors with the most appropriate offer–both in the marketing creative and once on site–at the optimal time.”

Contextual marketing goes a step further than behavioral targeting which is heavily dependent on group and lifetime customer behaviors. The new product by Coremetrics will allow marketers to segment customers based on other criteria, like participation in social media activities.

Tomz also said, “Previously, most sites that engaged in any type of targeting have focused on only single events (e.g. a user abandons a red blouse or a loan application form; then the site follows-up with a promotional offer for that same product). Contextual marketing includes additional information such as an individual’s attributes and historical behavior in an attempt to derive the most appropriate recommendation set.”

Many companies are already using this product, including PayScale and Rodale, the publisher of such magazines as Men’s health, Prevention and Mountain Bike.

What Do You Know About SEO?

While perusing through my SEM news feed this afternoon I was struck by a link that asked “Are You A Newbie, A Novice, A Master or A Dark Lord of SEO?”  “How curious and clever,” I thought to myself.  I had to take the bait.  When I clicked on the link I was directed to an SEO quiz.  I took the quiz and was bummed to find that I scored newbie status—but hey, at least I’m not a novice, and that’s really not bad considering I had no clue what SEO was a year ago.

In any case, the quiz had excellent entertainment value with its share of silly multiple choice questions, like “Why are absolute URLs better than relative URLS for on-page internal linking? D) They’re filled with vodka.”  But despite the sillyness, it was pretty informative.  After completing the quiz you are taken to page that displays all of the previously answered questions plus which ones were answered incorrectly and why they are incorrect.  It’s a great little tool for discerning which areas you are weakest in.  You might want to give it a try when you have free time.  You can find it at http://www.seomoz.org/seo-expert-quiz.  Have fun!  I know I did. 

Loyalty Marketing Can Help Target Hispanics and Youngsters

A new study on loyalty program trends has been conducted by loyalty marketing consultancy and publisher Colloquy. The study, titled “Segment Talk: The Difference Engine—A Comparison of Loyalty Marketing Perceptions Among Specific U.S. Consumer Segments,” surveyed three thousand consumers and focused on three loyalty industry categories: financial services, travel and retail.

Colloquy and its research partner found that over 40% of young adults and Hispanics self-identify as participants of loyalty programs. These two demographic categories also reported the highest instances of becoming retail customers due to loyalty programs.

Young adults and Hispanics also report higher-than-average redemption of electronics, magazine subscriptions and entertainment-related offers. The report predicts future growth in loyalty program activity for both segments.

Colloquy’s research also shows that consumers are not as interested in charity-oriented programs as they are in other loyalty offers; 90% of people surveyed said they redeemed most loyalty offers for personal gain.

The full study focused on six consumer segments: a control group titled General Adult, an affluent segment with incomes greater than $125,000, young adults, seniors who were 60 years and older, core women between the ages of 25 and 59 years with incomes between $50,000 and $125,000, and Hispanics with an income of $40,000 or higher. The full report of Colloquy’s findings is available for free at http://www.colloquy.com/whitepapers.

Personalize Pay-Per-Click Ads with Dynamic Keyword Insertion

Personalize Pay-Per-Click Ads with Dynamic Keyword Insertion

The sweet spot of successful pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising is personalizing search results to an audience of one.

Steps from Online Searcher to Click-through to Customer Sale or Conversion are straightforward:

Search marketers write the “right” paid-ad text headlines and targeted descriptions, within their keyword bids. Their paid ads display in top positions on search engine results pages. Sponsored ad results that are most relevant to a searcher’s request are the SE ads that get highest click-throughs … and potentially higher conversions for sign-ups or sales.

Perhaps the only marketing mystery in those steps is how to mass customize your PPC ads, how to personalize paid search ads to talk to that audience of one.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion is one such bit of magic.

What Is DKI?

Normally, a PPC search marketer bids on targeted keywords to trigger its pay-per-click ads, which display somewhere on search results pages.

With Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI), a searcher need not enter ALL of the search marketer’s keywords, or in the exact sequence, in order to trigger the ad in search results. More important for personalized results, searchers see their own search phrase in the marketer’s ad title with DKI.

Better: If the savvy DKI marketer repeats that keyword in their PPC ad title and ad description, then the searcher’s own entered keyword will display in boldface letters on the search engine results page listing.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion is how you customize your search marketing ads to talk to that individual search audience of one, drawing attention, eyeballs and a likely click-through.

Let’s say you’re Hot Stuff, a wholesaler/retailer of hot pepper spices and condiments to the online world’s “chile heads.” The keywords chile, chiles and chile peppers have become highly competitive (expensive bids) among spice marketers. However, you have a new line of dry chile rubs that market research says will light a fire under the barbeque crowd.

Here’s what your pay-per-click text ad might look like:

TITLE:  BBQ Chile Spice and Rubs  (25 characters)

DESCRIPTION: Try dry spice on your next barbeque. Chile Spice Rubs for no-drip BBQ. (70 ch)

DISPLAY URL: www.hotstuff.com/chile_rubs

Searchers who enter “BBQ,” “spice” or “chile” (from your purchased keyword list) into a search box will undoubtedly pull up your PPC ad … though the ranking, position and page number on which your ad appears are all question marks.

Let’s Try That Again, with Dynamic Keyword Insertion

At the stage at which you enter your PPC text ad into a Google AdWords or Yahoo! Panama or Microsoft Live Search paid-ad account, you would enter your keywords in DKI format like this:

The following example is from a Google AdWords console. Syntax and data entry fields are similar for Yahoo! and Microsoft ad campaign set ups. (Microsoft Live Search calls the DKI entry fields “parameters” and lets search marketers set up three different dynamic insertion fields.)

The DKI insertion is in braces – {   } . You’re bidding on keywords: BBQ, spice and chile.

Headline:  {KeyWord:BBQ Chile Spice And Rubs}  Max 25 characters

Description line 1: Try dry spice on your next barbeque   Max 35 characters 

Description line 2: Chile Spice Rubs for no-drip BBQ.   Max 35 characters

Display URL:  http://   www.hotstuff.com/chile_rubs
What A Searcher – Your Potential Customer – Sees

A searcher who enters “BBQ sauces and spice” into a search engine search box may get over 50,000 search results, both organic and sponsored.

Your DKI pay-per-click (entered in the Title/Headline field above) will display like this:

BBQ Sauces And Spice
www.hotstuff.com/chile_rubs   Try dry spice on your next barbeque  Chile Spice Rubs for no-drip BBQ.

Your dynamic keyword insertions (BBQ and spice) returned the searcher’s exact search phrase in displayed results.

Note that if the searcher entered more than the 25-character maximum into a search box – “BBQ sauces and spice and mixes” – then your default DKI title is inserted in boldface letters.

BBQ Chile Spice And Rubs
www.hotstuff.com/chile_rubs   Try dry spice on your next barbeque  Chile Spice Rubs for no-drip BBQ.

How To DKI Personalize Your Paid Search Ads
• If you manage your own PPC accounts, major search engines with PPC Programs have intuitive interfaces and help tutorials to guide you through dynamic keyword insertion and data entry fields.

• Ask an expert. Contact your online ad network site publisher – specialized industry sites, vertical search engines, local search site publishers – for DKI personalization services for your account.

• Price such custom copywriting services from your SEM or Online Advertising vendor, agency or account representative.