Interesting study by Jeffrey Glueck, CMO at Travelocity, who said the "Portfolio Approach" to Paid Marketing, contrary to conventional wisdom (of the Search Engines and SEM Firms that make their money from Search Advertising) does not work and only 2% of paid-search conversions fall into the category where the searcher originally clicked on a non branded term (like house plans, country house plans, craftsman house plans, etc).
In fact, even in cases where the 2% clicked on a non branded term - most of those ended up returning later and clicking on a branded term when they converted.
"…only to click and convert on a branded term at a later date. Travelocity now credits non brand phrases as being responsible for only 4% of each booking, meaning 96% of Travelocity's booked trips are the result of branded key words."
There's a lot of research to back this up ….. but many marketers might not want to look that closely at it.
"…He cited a Nielsen NetRatings study that showed half of all searches on Google and Yahoo are comprised of 100 terms — and that half of those terms are brand terms. He went on to cite another study from marketing-services agency 360i that found buying brand words typically accounts for just 5% of a marketer's total search spend but that those brand words drive 80% of the profit from search. "
Note to myself: Let me see if I got this right. Say I'm a B2B or B2C business that has a "brand name" … people in my audience have some notion of who and what my business is (we hope). Suppose I spend 10K a month on a portfolio keyword approach. Since the products I do sell via PPC end up being, 96% of the time, my own Brand name… were I to cut my spend down to say…..500 a month and only advertised on keywords that had my name on it ….I'd probably end up with more money in my pocket at the end of the day.
Amazing.
It fits in perfectly with the experience I had with architectural firms like The House Designers - when I was handling them - typically they'd spend a fixed sum a month and most of the time when a person came and bought - the keyword they used was their brand name, or the name of an architect associated with the brand. Against all evidence - they continued to insist the Portfolio approach worked better - which it clearly did not, in their case.
I have the data for 1 year to prove it, but I have no plans to publish it at this time. Yet, I saw the same thing on other sites that I worked with, and this was not just PPC traffic, but Organic Search traffic as well.
The great majority of traffic from Search Engines to most businesses is on the name of the business or, in the case of home plans, house plans and floor plans, the name of the chief architect, the name of a travel resort (when it was a travel site or destination country). That's just the way it is.
The implications … pretty much …. in the majority of cases (I won't say "every case") you make more money, more conversions if you just advertise on your own brand name and forget about all the other keywords your bidding on.
Again, that goes against Conventional Wisdom…. but looks who determined those rules? The people that have most to gain - The Search Engines and high end PPC Marketing firms.
Besides, I think Organic Traffic and Link Traffic are better for converting off of non-branded keywords … but that's just my opinion. But I have first hand knowledge in terms of the Architects …and I can prove it if I had to.
