Local Sales Start on the Web

Today’s consumers are using the Internet to research purchases online before buying at a local store because it saves time. When they go to a local store, they already know pricing and the different models available. Many times, they can purchase online for in-store pickup. This trend is growing rapidly; therefore, it is important for small businesses to know the benefits of local listings and local online advertising.

In case you doubt this trend, a recent study by ROI Research Inc. and Performics shows that online searches influence 20 to 30 percent of purchases made at retail locations, and these numbers are increasing.

Free Listings

Local search engines will give you a free basic listing that consists of your company name, street address, phone number, and other business details such as email address and hours of operation. Google gives you the opportunity to create coupons that customers can print out and present to your store for discounts.

You may find that you are already listed in some of these search engines because the engines populate their local listings from large databases such as Acxiom. Sometimes, the information is not accurate or up-to-date; therefore, you need to check for a listing, and if it’s wrong, make corrections. Each engine will post a procedure for doing this

The top five general search engines that provide local listings are Yahoo Local, Google Local, Citysearch (provides listings to Live Search), AskCity and AOL Local Beta.

Local search engines such as Local.com, TrueLocal, Verizon SuperPages and YellowPages.com compete against the major search engines for user queries. In most instances, you can get better results by advertising on the locals.

Advertising on the Locals

Savvy small business owners will budget for local search to reap the benefits of local online advertising. There are many benefits to advertising on local search engines versus general search engines. Below are a few of the reasons why.

Higher Click-Through and Conversion Rates: You will likely get higher click-through rates because the audience on locals is segmented and highly qualified. You might get fewer clicks because of the smaller database, but your conversion rates will be higher because the audience is targeted.

Branding: You’ll get better brand recognition on local search engines because results will be relevant to user queries. Fewer users will be exposed to your brand, but those who see your listing will recognize and remember it in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Banner Ads: Because they are smaller, local search engines can provide custom positioning for your banner ads. Most locals go out of their way to please advertisers and users by offering highly relevant content with targeted banners on the SERPs.

Other Advertising Opportunities

Besides the above, you can also invest in the following advertising programs on the locals:

AOL’s CityGuide specializes in local entertainment information. Marketers can target consumers by lifestyle and market through AOL.

Ask Sponsored Listings provide three levels of pricing for pay-per-click advertising: Easy Access Plan, Advanced Plan and News and Events Plan.

CitySearch offers two pay-per-click advertising plans, Web Connect and Call Connect, for placement on Microsoft Live Search, Yahoo, Google and Ask. You also receive access to online advertising tools to help manage your daily results.

Craigslist provides online classified ads, organized by region or city. Craigslist connects buyers and sellers in more than 300 communities, offering free listings.

Dotster is a web domain registration and hosting company that provides Local Site Promotion, a local advertising package. You set your monthly budget, and this service places your ad on all major search engines.

Froogle Local is a shopping search engine that allows users to search for specific products by location. You can be found in Froogle by submitting items free on Google Base. From Google Base, you can also create AdWords ads for each offer.

Google AdWords can help you target local online customers by setting your pay-per-click ads for “ad scheduling,” which is like dayparting, and the ads only appear during the hours when people search in a particular city, state or region.

Local.com gives you a free listing, and you can also target its 10 million-plus monthly customers with pay-per-click and banner advertising.

MyEzClicks will list your business in over 30 major search engines, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live Search for a monthly fee.

ReachLocal takes the complexity out of local advertising by providing one central place to set-up, maintain, and track your local search advertising campaigns with various pricing plans.

RegisterLocal provides a service for an annual fee that allows you to create a master profile that it submits to search engines and directories on your behalf.

TrueLocal’s mission is to drive online customers to offline businesses. This local search engine currently indexes over 13 million local businesses and offers multiple advertising opportunities starting at $1 per month.

Yahoo Local Listings will let you add or edit your business listing for free (Basic Listing) and also provides fee-based Enhanced Listings and Featured Listings to meet your company’s advertising needs.

YellowPages.com is a huge online local directory site that provides basic free listings as well as city guides and multiple advertising solutions.

Share This

Never has customer service been more important than on the web. That’s because consumers are just one click away from another retailer if your site does not perform.

Let me share a recent online buying experience. I went to a big retail site, which shall remain nameless, and searched for a gift for my son’s birthday. I found the perfect gift and ordered. It had to be sent to his address because I was late in ordering. So far, so good. In fact, everything went peachy keen with that transaction to the point where the gift was delivered promptly, and the recipient loved the gift.

But that’s not the end of the story. I was so impressed with the merchandise offers that I made two subsequent purchases that very same night. These purchases were for myself, and I know enough to check the shipping address, which I did. I’m pretty sure I did because I’m very anal about ordering online.

I completed that order, and then the site shows me another offer. So I bite, placing a third order. They hit the jackpot with me, I’m still impressionable in my old age. Again, I carefully change the shipping address, because this dumb shopping cart keeps defaulting to the first shipping address.

Fine, so I’m waiting for my merchandise to arrive. I wait and wonder, thinking about it now and then. Eventually, my daughter-in-law tells me the gift arrived, and she wrapped it nicely. She doesn’t tell me she subsequently got my skinny jeans and beaded top.

Then when I see her at the birthday party, she says, “Mom, I got these jeans I didn’t order, do you know anything about it?” Voila, my order, delivered to the wrong address! Well, fine, I can finally slink into those jeans. But with all the booze and beer at the party, I forget the package and drive 70 miles home without it.

Next scene: Mom asks her favorite daughter-in-law to mail the package, which she does dutifully, at the cost of 8 bucks. Well, nevermind, mom is anxious to get into those skinny jeans. The package arrives quickly. She opens the sack, and guess what? The jeans don’t fit!

You know why? That’s another long story. Mom is not savvy at ordering these new age jeans, so she went to the trouble of talking to the chat person, a male, asking if the jeans were ordered by waist size as indicated on the site. He checked and said yes, order by waist size. But the jeans fit 2 inches below the waist. While the mom is no hippo, she does have larger hips than her waist.

But that wasn’t the only problem with this order. The top had beads that were so huge that she didn’t care for it. So both the jeans and the top had to be returned. She follows instructions, and goes to check both items in the online return form. However, the form only allows a check on one of the items. So she has to go through the return process twice, individually for each item — it took a while to figure that one out.

Subsequently, she starts getting emails from the retailer regarding the return. Seems there is a shipping fee and a restocking fee for each item. The items must be returned separately with two separate prepaid shipping labels. She can return the jeans in the original bag, but she has to buy a new shipping envelope to return the top.

Turned out she paid almost 20 bucks just to see this merchandise. Do you think she will order from this retailer again?

BTW, the third shipment, a chrome rainfall showerhead, arrived at her residence, and she likes it. No man around the house to install it, but heck, a waterfall in the shower sounds great, right?

Here is her list of gripes, which she communicated in the many emails to the nice customer service people, who gave her credit for one restocking fee on future orders:

1.    Why would a shopping cart ever default to an address other than the consumer’s?
2.    Why can’t two items ordered on the same ticket be returned together?
3.    Why is there a restocking fee?
4.    Why aren’t the product descriptions more accurate?

Despite all her travails, mom may order again from this retailer because it was a good deal on the gift and the showerhead. And she has $4 credit on her next order.

Share This

Wholesalers and retailers are big fans of paid search advertising. For that reason, it’s a good idea to be aware of and guard against click fraud. It is quite possible you’ll never be a target for click fraud. On the other hand, if you must use highly competitive keywords, you could become a victim with the need to defend yourself.

The click fraud controversy has been a constant subject of dissention for over a year. Advertisers and click fraud detection firms claimed click fraud rates were up to 20 percent. Search providers like Google challenged their methodology, claiming it’s only half that much. Then Google’s CFO mentioned that click fraud could threaten Google’s business model. Google executives, including CEO Eric Schmidt, quickly disavowed these comments. Articles in Business Week and Wired gave people cause for alarm over the prevalence and cost of click fraud. And the brouhaha goes on.

Last year’s Outsell survey reported said Internet advertisers paid over $1 million for bogus clicks on their paid search ads. This shook industry confidence and prompted some marketers to reduce their search advertising spend with Google, Yahoo and others.
How Search Advertising Works: Google, Yahoo and others charge advertisers by the click every time someone clicks on the advertiser’s sponsored links in the search engine results pages (SERPs) through services such as AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing. Advertisers can also opt for a pay-per-click text, image or video ad on a search provider’s affiliate network such as Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network.

Definition of Click Fraud: Click fraud occurs when a person or a program clicks on the search ad without any intention of using or buying the advertiser’s product or service. In some cases, competitors click on ads to cause rivals to be overcharged. In other instances, fraudsters place the ads on their own web sites and then click incessantly on the links to get a portion of the shared revenue from Google or Yahoo as a result of being in the affiliate network. The most pernicious form of click fraud is posed by botnet masters that command tens of thousands of zombie PCs clicking fraudulently without possibility of detection.

Estimates of Click Fraud: Last year, there were reports of click fraud rates as high as 20 percent. Google claimed these estimates were inflated as an artifact of auditing firm methodologies. This year, Google admits to a click fraud rate of “less than 10 percent.”

However, the Click Fraud Index by Click Forensics reports a 14 percent click fraud rate for 2006. While Google has challenged its methodology for calculating click fraud, Click Forensics stands by its estimate as a third-party click fraud detection service. Click Forensics monitors online campaigns for click fraud by correlating data collected from search provider campaigns and the advertisers’ web sites.

Difficulty Tracking Click Fraud: The major obstacle has been the lack of transparency on the part of Google and Yahoo in their click fraud billing and tracking process. Google and Yahoo closely guard their anti-fraud systems over concerns that revealing crucial information might help fraudsters manipulate the system and evade detection. More recently, however, Google is providing a little more information and started letting advertisers opt out of contextual ad placement on competitor sites to avoid the fraudulent clicks by competitors.

Outsell Study Findings: Last year’s study reported that 75 percent of the advertisers surveyed indicated they were victims of click fraud. Subsequently, 27 percent of advertisers reduced or stopped spending on click-based advertising, and an additional 10 percent said they intended to curtail spending.

Outsell estimated the revenue lost by Google, Yahoo and other search providers at $500 million. Only 7 percent of advertisers requested refunds due to click fraud, and the average refund was $9,507. Additionally, unsolicited refunds were paid to 4.2 percent of advertisers, with an average of $9,444 from Google and $4,068 from Yahoo.

Ad Effectiveness: Search ads, which appear mostly as text and a link, are specifically tailored to the search terms. For example, a query for “European vacation” will typically show ads from travel companies. Most paid search campaigns show a healthy ROI, and that’s what makes this marketing strategy so successful.

Google Efforts to Prevent Click Fraud: Google claims “the percentage of invalid clicks actually identified by customers is 0.02 percent of all clicks.” Recently, Google shared information in Inside AdWords on how it protects advertisers against click fraud using a system of filters, offline analysis and investigations. Google’s standard prevention methods include monitoring IP addresses and detecting duplicate clicks and other basic patterns that suggest fraud.

The newer click fraud prevention firms offer algorithm-based programs to limit bad clicks. These programs estimate the statistical likelihood of a click being fraudulent based on behavioral variables in addition to IP address.

The Fuss Over Click Fraud: Click fraud has always been around, but it’s a hot topic now because we have more advertisers in paid search than ever before, making the market keenly competitive. With everybody on board, including small and medium-sized businesses, keyword prices have surged, and we’re faced with a higher incidence of click fraud.

Getting a Click Fraud Refund: All the search providers claim to give ready refunds. However, the onus is on the advertiser to document and prove click fraud. Sometimes this is difficult to do, and many times only partial refunds are approved. Advertisers must be vigilant in monitoring their campaigns with web analytics to spot aberrations that might suggest click fraud.

Paid Search Remains Unstoppable: Despite the click fraud imbroglio, Internet advertising in the U. S. increased in 2005, as did Google’s and Yahoo’s profits. Pay-per-click advertising totaled $5.5 billion in 2005 and $9.4 billion in 2006. Many large firms relegate click fraud as a cost of doing business.

Share This

Search is changing in many ways. We have personalized search from Google, social media search and Web 2.0 applications and sites. All this against the background of increased demand for sponsored text ads on the search engine results pages (SERPs). At the vanguard is the rising prominence of vertical and local search engines.

Major research firms show that vertical search engines have become a necessity because of dissatisfaction with general search. Reportedly, the average search failure rate is about 32 percent, which has given rise to the development of three varieties of specialized search engines: local, topical and vertical or B2B.

Verticals give B2B marketers an advantage over general search because they serve highly relevant results for their industry or niche, enabling users to find needed information quickly and easily. More importantly, they offer advertisers many distinct advantages.

The Vertical Advertising Advantage: As an advertiser, you get more visibility in a less crowded environment, making it easier for users to recognize and interact with your brand. Your click-throughs might be lower, but conversions will higher with a targeted audience. These two factors result in a higher return on investment (ROI) for your marketing campaigns because you’ll pay for fewer clicks while gaining more conversions.

Vertical search engines offer pay-per-click search ads with excellent targeting opportunities. Many offer banner ads, direct links, special ad placement, user generated media and email marketing opportunities.

Banner Ads: You can request custom positioning for your banners on VSEs. Most verticals will go out of their way to please customers. They offer users highly relevant content with targeted banners on the SERPs, meeting their advertisers’ needs.

Direct Links: Vertical search engines will link directly to clients’ sites or requested URLs. This gives advertisers an excellent SEO benefit. Search engines can now associate the advertisers’ sites with a highly ranked VSE. Without such direct links, search engines might never find some sites.

Special Ad Placement: Vertical search engines can accommodate client requests quickly and on the fly. Major search engines, on the other hand, have to deal with corporate structure, perhaps running issues by IT and corporate, etc. Vertical search engines are lean and versatile; they can react quickly to changing market conditions and industry trends.

User Generated Media: Vertical search engines cover issues related to specific topics or industries. Therefore, they can allow customers to blog on their sites, encouraging industry participation. This transforms such verticals into Web 2.0 information super highways for their niche. Content can be user generated or industry generated. In fact, TopTenWholesale has been doing this long before Web 2.0. We employ journalists to cover industry topics. We provide forums for users and advertisers. We aspire to become the ultimate information resource for general merchandising wholesalers and retailers. Blogs and stories also provide great SEO benefits to the customers we link to in our stories.

Email Marketing: Many verticals have email lists, and these databases consist of recipients interested in the niche. TopTenWholesale’s opt-in email lists are much more relevant than any mass-market offerings. Our users look forward to receiving their weekly emails. By the same token, our customers love the responses received from their email newsletter ads. Relevant ads to a relevant and receptive audience make this offering a win-win.

B2B marketers would be wise to consider the above advantages of vertical search engines for their next online marketing campaign. You can run identical campaigns on general search engines and on a vertical in your niche, and then compare results. You may be surprised at the better performance you’ll achieve on vertical search engines.

Share This

TopTenWholesale employs journalists and editors to bring you fresh general merchandising wholesale and retail news every week. We also encourage our users to comment and blog with us. We enjoy learning from our users and advertisers and use that information to better meet their needs. In fact, if there is a story you’d like covered, let us know through your comments.

Our new blog will be debuting soon. We’ve added some of the most talented and seasoned Internet editors around. Our coverage on general merchandise expands over 500 categories of merchandise. We also publish tips on:
• SEM
• Business Tools
• Retailing
• Product Sourcing
• Trade Shows
• E-tailing
And much, much more. We encourage user-generated content and we’d love to hear from all of you! Thanks for making us the #1 Wholesale Search Engine in the world and we look forward to initiating some of the most amazing innovations the wholesale industry has ever seen in the next six months. I’m sure our “friends” are waiting to copycat, so we need to get started. Happy selling!

Share This

By Claudia Bruemmer

Shopping cart abandonment rates have been estimated as high as 75 percent. Last fall, MarketingSherpa research found an average ecommerce shopping cart abandonment rate of 59.8 percent.

There will always be intrinsic and extrinsic factors that contribute to shopping cart abandonment. Some have to do with site usability, while others may depend on shopper intentions. Some shoppers simply change their mind or get buyer’s remorse before making a purchase no matter how well your conversion funnel is optimized.

The Anatomy of an Ecommerce Sale

While shoppers usually find your offerings through search engines, there are many other ways of navigating to your site, including links from banner ads, newsletters and contextual ads — some will even type your location directly into the browser.

Many times, prospects enter your site from a landing page, prompting marketers to perfect their landing pages. Another important element in the sales process is the strength of your conversion funnel in culminating the sale. While the landing page is critical for getting customers to enter your site, few marketers bother optimizing the conversion funnel that leads to the shopping cart.

Landing Page Versus Conversion Funnel

It is a good idea to optimize your landing pages, but the real test lies in getting customers to navigate your conversion funnel to the shopping cart upon leaving the landing page. MarketingSherpa suggests conducting multivariate tests of page elements in different combinations and then isolating the results of each variable. For instance, you might be testing the headlines or the background colors on copy leading to the “Click Here to Order” button. A simple change to one or more of these elements can result in a decrease in shopping cart abandonment as well as increases in conversion rates.

Simple changes in page design elements can result in increased conversions. It’s up to you to test the different combinations until you find the best result. For an example of how small changes can make a big difference, review the testing done by Marketing Experiments Journal in The Power of Small Changes Tested. Here you can learn how to conduct A/B Split Tests and Multivariate Tests on such web page elements as the headline, subscription form or logo.

In one test for an online publisher, a small change in a single sentence near the order button resulted in increasing the conversion rate from 1.58 percent to 1.77 percent, a 12 percent improvement. With a multivariate test, the researchers improved results with minor tweaks to the headline, page design and color.

Improving Your Conversion Funnel

There are a number of issues to address when optimizing your web site conversion funnel. Below are some tips that can help improve shopping cart abandonment.

1. Show checkout page progress: Let prospects know where they are in the checkout process. Number the steps and specify each task clearly. Let prospects review their place in the process, giving them the means to return to a previous step if necessary.

2. Link to the product: When an item is placed in the shopping cart, include a link to the product page. This gives shoppers the option to check on product features if they want to ensure they’re ordering the right product.

3. Product Thumbnails: Including product images can increase conversions by 10 percent.

4. Shipping costs: Provide shipping cost estimates while visitors browse. Shoppers need to know the total cost, and this can help cement the sale.

5. Show availability on product pages: Don’t make prospects wait until checkout to find out a product is out of stock. They may get frustrated and never come back.

6. Delivery estimate: Provide prospects with estimated delivery date information.

7. Make shopping cart changes easy: Make it easy to delete an item from the shopping cart. Customers will appreciate it when they can easily change quantities, colors, sizes, etc. Making such changes difficult results in shopping cart abandonment.

8. Explain errors clearly: Customers can inadvertently leave out information or incorrectly fill out a form during checkout. Provide clear error messages that tell them what needs to be corrected (i.e., enter your email address to process this form).

9. Offer other sales options: Some people don’t want to order online, offer a phone number or other options for making the sale, including a printable order form for fax or postal mail orders.

10. Make it easy for new customers: It’s twice as hard to sell new customers versus old customers. Therefore, don’t make it a requirement to register or login prior to purchase. You can later solicit more information with the email address. Offer an incentive for registering, e.g., a discount on the initial order for new customers.

11. Display third-party endorsements: It’s known to boost conversions when you post your VeriSign, Better Business Bureau and credit card logos near checkout.

12. Exit survey: If your prospects abandon the shopping cart, offer them an incentive to complete an exit survey. This can give clues as to why orders are not completed.

13. Email recovery program: Send email to shoppers who abandoned shopping carts, systematically plugging names into a crafted message that provides customers with the opportunity to revisit their cart. The emails should be sent three to six days after abandonment on Tuesday through 3 p.m. EST Friday only. Offer an incentive such as a $5 gift certificate on orders over $35. This has been known to increase sales conversions from 8 to 14 percent.

While the above tips can help you improve shopping cart abandonment, you need to test the changes you implement one by one, noting the improvements. This may take a little time and effort, but the improved conversion rates will make it worth your while.

Share This

TopTenWholesale Guide to Dropshipping

By Claudia Bruemmer

If you are one of the many wholesalers and retailers that do not have facilities to stock products in bulk, this info is for you. Even if you don’t have back office operations due to the expense of facilities and personnel, you can still have a thriving business by shipping products to customers via dropshipping.

How Dropshipping Works

A dropshipper is a company that has access to products from various manufacturers and the means to ship these products directly to customers on behalf of other merchants or wholesalers. This can make wholesaling and retailing easy — for a fee.

Usually dropshippers charge a one-time fee to become a reseller and then smaller monthly maintenance fees for hosting and maintaining the web site and back office operations. Some dropshippers will even build you a web site geared for online retail or wholesale sales as part of the initial package. Or, you can build your own.

The benefits to using dropshippers is that you don’t have to hassle with returns, and they don’t have to pay the costs associated with managing, storing or sending out merchandise. Some dropshippers will provide marketing support and web analytics in addition to creating and maintaining the web site for you.

Selecting a Dropshipper

Start by establishing your company goals and budgeting needs. If you start small, you can look for a less-expensive option. Larger firms might look for a dropshipper that handles thousands of transactions per day.

You need to investigate potential dropshippers thoroughly, paying attention to size and reliability, product fulfillment channels, and the brands provided for shipment. You can offer a large product line of name brand items, depending on what your dropshipper provides.

Below are some tips for those selecting a dropshipper:

• Ensure that the dropshipper will identify only the your business and contact information upon shipping the merchandise. This is important for developing your brand and customer loyalty.

• Shop for a dropshipper that offers bulk discounts.

• Inquire how long it takes for products to be shipped, contracting only with dropshippers that ship in 5 days or less.

• Ask whether the dropshipper requires minimum orders. It’s best to deal with one that doesn’t require minimums.

• Ask if there is a middleman in the process. It’s best to avoid dropship brokers, dealing directly with the firm making the shipments.

• Ask whether the dropshipper offers manufacturer warranties on all the products it sells. This is a must for sales and customer service.

• Determine whether or not the dropshipper cares about your success as a reseller by offering phone support and/or other means of support. Reputable dropshippers know that your profitability contributes to their own success and will provide the support you need.

You can conduct a search on TopTenWholesale.com, which lists the firms offering dropshipping programs. Alternatively, you can look into dropshipper directories, which can be purchased from various publishers. A search for “dropshipper directories” brought up many such resources. One firm advertises a large database of ecommerce wholesalers, light bulk wholesalers, volume wholesalers, liquidation wholesalers and import wholesalers, in addition to information from successful ebusiness owners and access to market research.

Dropshipper Fees

Most dropshippers charge a base price for the program and then a monthly maintenance fee. However, there are many business models for reseller clients.

If you want to become a reseller for electronics products like computers and digital cameras, the dropshipping license fees may start around $5,000 to become a reseller. In many cases, this will include the custom web site, hosting, maintenance and marketing support. Then your monthly fees would be around $50 or $60 per month for continued hosing, maintenance, and back office operations.

In some cases, resellers receive a fixed percentage of the sale price for each product sold, ensuring reseller revenue. Depending on the manufacturer, the fixed percentages can run anywhere from 5 to 95 percent. However, the reseller makes money regardless of sales price because the fixed percentage never changes. Some dropship agreements give the reseller a percentage of the manufacturers’ suggested retail price (MSRP). However, products are not always sold for MSRP in today’s market.

Caveat Emptor

In Latin, this means “let the buyer beware.” This is relevant when shopping for a dropshipper. There are always fly-by-night scam artists operating on the web. The deal that sounds too good to be true usually is. Some companies claim to offer name brands and then don’t deliver what’s advertised. Then you get stuck with angry, dissatisfied customers.

Avoid gray markets and foreign dropshippers because there are no safeguards once you’ve sent your money. The gray market involves new goods sold through distribution channels unauthorized by the manufacturer. These goods are not illegal but because they are sold outside the normal distribution channels, there is no recourse if the goods are damaged or defective.

Another way merchants get ripped off is through foreign dropshippers that promise but don’t deliver. Again, there is no recourse. The best line of defense is to research thoroughly and follow the tips suggested above.

Share This

The caption read “New Search Engine Provides Actionable Local Search.” In case you’re wondering, this is a solution for referring consumers to local stores for buying high-end consumer products searched for on search engines. Sounds like just another search engines. However, it’s unique in that it offers more than just product information. It also tells you where you can buy locally. And consumers can get there from Yahoo or Google when performing a product search.

This capability is being offered by Krillion, which just launched what it calls the first actionable local search engine. Krillion has a unique localiazation technology that they believe will change the way ready-to-buy online consumers will find products and local stores from which to buy them.

Krillion believes that local search is currently not very functional and that its localization technology will fulfill the need to make product searches truly local. We’ve had Yahoo Local and Google Maps for a while, as well as many other varieties of local search, but research shows that local search has progressed as fast as projected.

Krillion states that 75 percent of consumers who buy big-ticket items do all their research online. True. And they make over 90 percent of their purchases offline. True. However, general search engines are usually unable to find and deliver results that provide specific local stores for specific products. Hmmm, probably true.

Krillion solves this problem with its unique Krillion Localization Engine™ that crawls the web to find, integrate and deliver actionable local search results for the ready-to-buy consumer. As of its February 5 launch, Krillion states it has over 275 million pages of relevant local search results displaying local product information for major appliances in over 40,000 U.S. cities and towns.

“Krillion delivers local search results that combine very specific product information with very specific locality information. These results truly are ‘actionable’ meaning that when consumers have completed their Internet research, they can grab their keys, hop into the car, drive to the store and buy the product,” said Joel Toledano, co-founder and CEO of Krillion.

“We are delivering an inventory of search pages that have never before been available and we see this as a giant step forward for manufacturers, retailers and consumers,” continued Toledano.

Krillion Is Organized by Categories

Krillion delivers search results based on categories like a directory. The first category is Major Appliances and other categories will be added soon. These categories include consumer electronics, lawn and garden, seasonal appliances and more.

Krillion is also focused on finding and delivering relevant search results for national brands sold by national and regional “big box” retailers. Krillion believes it will be able to deliver usable search results for the majority of consumer searches.

“One of the historical challenges with local search, and online shopping in particular, is connecting Internet research with offline purchase behavior, which is where the majority of transactions occur,” said Greg Sterling, principal, Sterling Market Intelligence. “By offering information about where to buy products locally Krillion better serves consumers and further confirms that the future of online shopping is offline.”

Advertisers Gain New Local Search Inventory

Krillion offers immediate availability of millions of pages of local product advertising inventory, along with customized analytics to measure the effectiveness of your paid search campaigns. It expects to become the “last-leg” in a national ad campaign, linking the ready-to-buy consumer with the specific store where s/he can purchase the desired product. A click-to-call feature is available so consumers can quickly check product inventory prior to visiting the store.

This sounds like a very convenient service and I would like to try it once all the categories are available.

“Krillion’s approach offers the opportunity to significantly redefine the ways in which brands engage with consumers at the local level. It’s an innovative approach that will help drive growth in this market and better serve the needs of advertisers,” said Torrence Boone, President, Digitas Boston.

Krillion built its search engine based on the premise that consumers will not change their search habits. Therefore, consumers don’t have to search directly on Krillion to find Krillion results. Instead, they can search from their favorite search engine (Google, Yahoo, you name it) and Krillion results will likely be displayed on those pages. Consumers then click to find Krillion for their local product and store information.

This sounds very convenient if the categories will eventually be exhaustive. Search continues to become more convenient as marketers realize consumers will express themselves online, make their wishes known and behave accordingly. Companies that ignore consumer behavior do so at their peril.

More Info: http://www.krillion.com/xA-news

Share This

By Claudia Bruemmer

Behavioral targeting (BT) can be rewarding for retailers. However you have to know how to measure and track the relevant variables to get the best results.

The Lure of BT

As a retailer, you probably use direct response and various types of promotions as a major part of your marketing strategy. Most retailers favor online programs such as affiliate marketing, email marketing and paid search strategies. These programs follow a direct marketing ad model.

The promise of BT has grabbed the attention of retailers because it fits right into the direct marketing model. BT can also address some of the key issues that challenge online retailers. Issues such as increased competition, escalating keyword prices in paid search, new customer acquisition and incremental sales goals.

BT for Retailers

The inclusion of BT strategies in an online marketing program can significantly advance your revenue goals and grow your business. ValueClick Media General Manager David Yovanno says, “We have consistently found that by using behavioral targeting in a scalable environment, marketers can reliably expect significant and repeatable increases in their ROI.”

However, retailers need to understand that BT is more of a tool for building demand and qualifying potential buyers. It’s not a sales-driving tactic at the last point in the conversion funnel. Strategies like search engine marketing will drive people to the point of sale in a demand market, and BT helps earlier in the sales cycle, building demand and qualifying your prospects.

To get the most bang for your buck from BT, you need to understand as much as you can about your customers’ behavior patterns. There are a lot of great analytics platforms that can provide rich data and insight to fuel your BT strategy. Other insights that can contribute to an effective BT program include seasonality, industry trends and market conditions.

Identifying Actionable Behavior

You can gain insight from actionable data that will help you sharpen your competitive edge. Meet your stated business goals by integrating behavioral targeting concurrently with search marketing, email marketing and other media.

An understanding of customer behavior such as shopping cart abandonment can be put together with information from industry trends to help you effectively plan marketing campaigns. If an industry study shows that consumers like certain policies such as a liberal return policy or a purchase online with in-store pickup policy, you can elect to initiate those policies based in industry data. Simply target the prospects that visited your site but didn’t purchase with an email message advising them of your new return policy or in-store pickup capability. This type of retargeting often results in many new conversions.

Data In, Data Out

In addition to understanding customer behavior, retailers must also understand the results data from a BT program. While most retailers measure click-throughs to conversions/sales, this may show a high percentage of view-throughs, even as high as 90 percent. While this represents exposure to your ad or message, the actual conversion or sale can take place at different points in time after the initial ad impression. By using cookies, you can determine whether or not your site visitors have been exposed to an ad previously, enabling proper credit of a view-through.

It is important to measure the impact of BT programs on your search programs, looking at such metrics as Overall Increase in Sales, Reduction in Cost of Sale, Increase in Average Order Value and so forth.

Retailers can experience significant overall lifts in conversions when introducing BT. For instance, ValueClick Media reported that an electronics retailer client saw conversion rates to sales of over 15 percent with behavioral targeting, which compared to a 2.97 percent conversion rate from its run-of-network campaign. However, you need to understand these metrics, what the numbers mean and how your promotional programs interact with each other to achieve overall success.

BT Tips for Retail Sites

• Do not measure BT solely on a direct-to-sales metric.

• Be aware of customer behavior patterns, industry trends, sales pressure, and market opportunities to determine your targeting strategy.

• Consider the impact of BT on all other marketing programs to determine ROI.

• BT programs take time to develop. Give yourself six to eight weeks before trying to determine results.

• Proper BT budget allocation is important in order to realize gains. This can depend on your overall online marketing and advertising budget.

BT has the power to fuel online marketing and advertising programs. As a retailer, you must understand how to measure BT within your overall ROI equation and business goals to fully engage its potential.

Share This

The event focused on showcasing the digital advertising tools developed in Microsoft’s adCenter Labs. The tools represent nearly 60 technologies at various stages of development, including keyword technologies, consumer orientation technologies, video display technologies and many others.

“The technologies showcased at Demo Fest will help create unprecedented opportunity for developers and search engine marketers like the Keyword Services Platform,” said Tarek Najm, engineer and general manager of Microsoft adCenter at Microsoft. “KSP is a service that provides a framework for researchers to plug in advanced algorithms in the form of building blocks to be consumed by developers for building sophisticated advertiser applications.”

Below is a sample of the new adCenter Labs technologies that can help provide a good advertising experience for users, advertisers and developers.

Keyword Technologies
Keyword technology plays a vital role in paid search and contextual ads by allowing advertisers to reach consumers interested in their products and services based on the terms entered into a search query box.

Commercial Intent Detection: This advanced keyword analysis tool helps differentiate consumers ready to purchase online from consumers searching for information about products or performing other tasks. The tool provides a probability score indicating the likelihood that a keyword or phrase is part of a search with commercial intent. This can be used to track user progress through the conversion funnel, or to determine that the user is not looking to buy.

Query Entity Detection: This technology detects the best way to break down a multiword query. For instance, if a user searches for “real estate agent,” this tool can tell that “real estate” is one phrase and “agent” is another. This tool helps determine the meaning of a query term, improving the relevance of search results.

Keyword Services Platform: This will enable developers to build more intelligent applications for online advertising. It provides a set of web service APIs related to keyword technologies such as keyword recommendation, forecasting, categorization and monetization. To quote James Colborn, product manager for adCenter Labs, “We’re making it an open network by publishing and sharing the algorithm. We’re excited to see how our partners will build on the KSP.”

Contextual Advertising: This technology classifies web sites and keywords into a hierarchical taxonomy. This helps increase the relevance of contextual ads by ensuring the categories of publisher sites are relevant to advertisers’ products and services.

Consumer Orientation Technologies

When placing online ads, marketers must consider the idiosyncrasies of different consumers audiences.

Sensitive Content Detection: This technology can help detect when web pages contain content considered objectionable by the general public, such as pornography, crime or terrorism.

Large Display Feedback: This vision-based technology creates interactive public displays that can measure audience size, track audience gestures and estimate demographics.

Content Classification: This technology will help increase the probability that ads displayed during web searches are relevant to consumer queries. The technology does this by accurately analyzing and matching the web pages included in search results.

Video Display Technologies

Online video gives advertisers a powerful medium to connect with consumers, particularly when the video includes interactive and other advanced technology.

Social Video Sharing: This tool allows users to highlight and comment on information within a specific area of a video frame. This allows users to participate in meaningful, social interactions on specific topics within the video. Users can discuss how the umpire just made a bad call on a pitch, or ask questions about a step in baking instructions.

Video Hyperlinks: This stand-alone tool allows marketers to embed video hyperlinks within online video ads. The hyperlinks can be associated with specific products in the video, leading consumers to web sites where they can get additional information or purchase products.

Search marketers have using Microsoft adCenter for a few months now and are generally satisfied with its targeting capabilities. The major shortcoming is traffic volume, due to ads displayed on limited inventory. ContentAds is expected to help expand inventory.

You can view the Press Release here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/newsroom/msn/factsheet/adCenterBreakthroughsFS.mspx

Share This