Olivia Atkinson
Live From #BrightonSEO
Finally, a conference in person with real-life people. I might be the only one wearing the bright red t-shirt stating ‘SEO is my superpower’ they sent out in the post before the event, but I’m fully embracing it. I’ve never been to Brighton before or Brighton SEO plus, it’s a free bloody t-shirt!
To kick off the Brighton SEO conference after confirming our negative COVID test, accepting a lanyard and a tote bag (another freebie) the first session was due to start!
The first speaker was Faye Thomassen Head of Marketing at Mediahawk, who focused on ROI and the 5 pitfalls every marketer should avoid.
Search Campaign ROI: 5 pitfalls every marketer should avoid
1. Are we killing lead generation campaigns without realising?
Attribution models exist for a reason, but are we looking at the right data? Or is the way it’s being measured realistic?
Faye used buying a sofa as an example. Mentioning she would look online and research, have a look on social media, flick through magazines and go to the shops to see the sofa in person.
There is value in understanding what’s going on in the middle, not just the one thing that spiked the interest initially or what closed the deal. Everything has a part to play.
What is the value of assisted clicks?
When looking at a specific campaign, the first and last click attributions are being measured. Looking at the Trade sector as an example, the last click attribution was 28% whilst the first click was 17%.
If you’re thinking of switching something off, make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons and that you understand how it’s being measured.
2. Are you missing lead generation opportunities?
How does searching fit into the customers journey?
The customer journey map is essential for looking at each stage individually. What are these emotions, actions, touchpoints, pain points and challenges?
Search plays a big role in the research phase, but what if it is used at the decision stage or buyers' stage? There could be opportunities to use different messages and keywords or phrases to suit the buyer's journey.
3. Not capturing your offline conversion.
Phone calls are one of the hardest things to track. Your phone number appears on the website, on an eBook, a data sheet, a magazine article, social media, the list goes on.
If the sales team are picking up the phone, it will be classed as a phone lead. It will be attributed to telemarketing even if it was your campaign that made them call.
Have you thought about the correlation between bounce rate and phone calls? Bounce rate is predominately a statistic that tells us your audience isn’t engaged but what if they’re coming to your site and calling you. Or even taking a note of the number and calling you later.
10% of calls to dealerships are sales calls.
45% of calls result in new enquiry generating £304bn of new review for UK business.
Business’s report receiving 34% more calls now on average than they did 5 years ago. – (MoneyPenny)
Identifying if phone calls are a result of your search campaigns can and will help with attribution.
4. Are you missing ready-made customer insights?
Have you considered if the phone calls that are coming through to you are the perfect people to ask questions to?
People spend money and time on research when they don’t need to. People that call you are already your target audience and they’re already coming to you. Maximise on this.
Voice search is only increasing, 27% of the global population are using voice search on mobile – source Google
Use tools like speech analytics which can auto spot keywords – so if you’re having a lot of phone calls, understand the context of the conversations that are happening and the requests that you are receiving. By starting to write copy that will resonate with your audience, you are one step ahead.
This can be exceptionally good for spotting trends, meaning you can optimise the opportunity of trends and maximise on this.
Learn from what your customers are saying to identify new opportunities and optimise campaigns.
5. Treating all leads as equals.
Different leads have different values. Some campaigns might bring in fewer leads and cost more, but could be bringing in more revenue. Leads shouldn’t be measured by their number, but by the quality and the revenue, they bring in.
Focusing your effort on those leads that are going to bring in the revenue will have a better impact on your bottom line.
Conclusion
There are several talks all at the same time so you have to pick wisely. Luckily there are 3 of us here today so we don’t miss anything.
This talk kicked off the conference beautifully! Faye’s topic focused on measuring, not just the tools to do so, but the other things that can impact it – those that we aren’t tracking. We get so bogged down by the tools and the tracking that sometimes we forget about traditional methods that are harder to track, like phone calls.
Faye’s approach questions everything – sometimes the data isn’t the full picture and we need to factor in other things.
I’m off to the next session in hope to find someone wearing one of these free t-shirts. There are 4000 people at this event and I’ve not seen another rocking this tee, did I not get the memo?