Duct Tape Marketing had a post on what I call "Branding" titled Think How You Do, Not What You Do that I really like.

"……I think most businesses miss what it is that does make them different. It's true, if you prepare tax returns, many others may do what you do. But, the magic, and the way in which you win the hearts and minds of your clients is "how you do it."

I once visited with an actual tax specialist and financial planner who offered very good coffee, great music and a masseuse while clients waited to have their taxes prepared. Believe me, no one visited his financial spa to talk price. They did prepare taxes, but how they did it, the experience, the process that clients were treated to, was what made them different. That was their entire marketing message. "

One of the issues I've struggled with is the extremely low conversion rates many of the clients I have taken on as SEO/SEM clients have; they think SEO will fix that, and it won't. 

Somehow, in the rush to get onto the web and take advantage of the "free" and multi-geographical, multi-targeting, viral nature of the Internet - businesses have forgotten that they often made their actual sales and conversion offline, and that's still true.  Here's some proof -

I borrowed this diagram and the text immediately from Emergence Media -

"…A recent study by the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association has found that traditional offline media - such as Magazines, TV and Newspapers - were a high factor (>~42%) in leading to consumers conducting online research on the product/service advertised.

This completes the conversion loop when comparing to the Google’s number showing that of the “25% purchased an item relating to their query, and of that number, the majority – 63% — completed that purchase offline.”

Before the Internet - there was no "online" everything was offline.  In this case, if your tax accountant got a lot of repeated business it may have been not just what he, she or they did, but how they did it. 

But on the web, on Google, people don't see that …. they just see a bunch of Accountants competing with each other - often based on content / technology of the site being the final determiner of how the site ranks for a query.

Still, while people might find someone online, some business or service, more often than not, if it's not something they can immediately do (IE: a fax service, a photo service, a software download …. something like that….. they're going to end up transactional with the Brand directly … via Teleweb or some combination of personal contact.

The ROI & Metrics post from Emergence-Media  focuses on integrating metrics to track offline conversions -  my post today, talks about Branding and how you communicate what you do that makes you different, in the first place, so people actually want to do business with you; both are part of the same continuum - I am a web analyst in that I want to track the entire funnel process - across channels.

So I'm going to go over some basic conversion percentages that I've rattled off in the past here at Webmetricsguru.com.

1. Architects - Architectural House Plans  - about 1 in every 2500 visits results in sale / conversion of something - that's a conversion rate of about .04% (and the conversion might be for a low priced plan or magazine - not the higher priced items like a "craftsman house plan" for a 4000 sq foot house, etc).
2. Corporations - Without giving the house away, so to speak, my work with Corporate clients has shown me that conversion rates are very low in general - but clients are often other large business entities and one sale/conversion (IE: average ticket price) is large - perhaps upwards of 100,000 dollars per conversion, on average.  Still, you might have to get a lot of traffic of the right type to get one that is "confirmed".
1. I have noticed that offline advertising via large media outlets, print and TV/Video often drives conversions but unless the analytics is set up before hand, it can be difficult to track cause and effect.  You might look at a successful campaign and wonder why a dumb looking page got so much traffic all of a sudden….it's not all of a sudden..it's your Wall Street Journal or NY Times Ad, but unless you can tie that all together you'll be incorrect in your assumptions and understanding of what drives success for Corporate Marketing.
3. Travel Industry - my work with travel distributors show me that Yahoo seems to drive the most engaged visitors but overall, you have to do a lot of advertising and email newsletters (IE: Travel-zoo) to get large volumes of potential bookings.  Therefore, we can also say that conversion here is in the very low numbers - perhaps .01%

Truth is, anything that's a "considered purchase" that you can't get right away, over the internet - is going to require a real "branding" effort to be successful.  Even businesses like Moo.com, that make business cards that are "different" which you can do entirely online - the sales are resulting more from "branding" and "word of mouth" - how they are different than "What" they do (IE: cards).

But if you want to get your conversion rate up to match the even anemic 2% or 3% industry average for online transactions - your transaction needs to be entirely online - including the product.   So ….what would that have to be for the businesses I've mentioned:

1. Architects - House Plans - pick and choose online (can do today) PLUS get deliver of plan as an online file (NOW) and printout at Kinko's (anytime you want) Plus have INSTANT communication with the Architect of the plan or ACCESS to the Architect's office to get INSTANT QUOTES on changes or help in BUILDING.   How many Architects are even halfway there?  I don't know of anyone I've met that is even 25% there.  Hence, their conversion rates will remain low - but Persuasion Methodology - IE: The Eisenberg's approach, will help alot.
2. Corporations - Corporate Marketing - Social Media outreach, virtual games, branded TV shows delivered online, Personalization seems to be the way to go - but the jury is still out on that one.  The problem is that many Corporations are trying to be like Google, or be like someone else - or co-opt other branding messages and not being themselves, or figuring out why people want their stuff in the first place - so for Corporations, Branding and Delivery on the Brand are probably more important than anything else.  Good SEO also helps as big Corporations have a lot of pages and can do well
   on the LONG TAIL.
3. Travel - They need to advertise much more carefully in Local Markets than most do - and study the analytics to see who is more likely to engage based on where they come from.  Also, Branding is half the battle for a Resort … like the one's I'm dealing with.

That goes against, but doesn't have to, typical SEO and SEM - which seems to me the lazy way out of Branding.  Just give your money to Google and Yahoo and they will solve everything.

Well…. did it work?  If you spent 10K on Google AdWords did you make 50K back?  If you didn't - if you did not make even the 10K back, if you made less than what you put in - then you need to go back to square one - go to FutureNowInc.com and buy one of the Conversion Guides - go and figure out what's wrong with your site and forget about AdWords, and Panama and all the rest for now.

Long post - time for me to get off my soup crate, have lunch and go and paint something.