• by Linda Fisk , March 10, 2006

As both paid and natural search marketing strategies become mainstream online marketing tools, too often a fundamental and critical question is never asked: "What exactly are we trying to accomplish here?"

Defining what success means is perhaps the most important first step to any search strategy. Deciding whether you need to simply build additional awareness, engender loyalty among a current audience, drive a targeted audience to a specific area of your Web site, or drive conversion among visitors to your site, can significantly change your search campaign strategy.

Although 43 percent of companies are using the Internet primarily as a lead generation tool, according to Jupiter Research, arguably, a majority of online businesses could be utilizing the Internet to drive awareness, loyalty and visitation in addition to driving conversion.

For sites that use search as a lead generation tool, such metrics as conversion rates, return visitation percentage, and the abandonment rate from marketing landing pages may be the most important data to track and measure. But for content sites dependent on advertising dollars as their primary revenue stream, building valuable audiences, directing visitation to specific areas of the Web site, and engendering loyalty among those audiences are key. Here are two examples of how to define the specific objectives for such a site, how to build a uniquely tailored search strategy to accomplish those objectives, and how to measure the success of the search strategy.

Directing Traffic: If your revenue generation model is chiefly based on Web site advertising, then conversion metrics may not be meaningful to you. In fact, if the majority of your revenue generation is dependent on exposing an advertiser's message to the largest audience of qualified prospects as possible, then the success of your search campaign should be based on well-defined visitation goals. In this case, you might define search campaign success as driving a volume of visitors to defined area of your Web site during specific time frame above a baseline metric. Here, you're simply measuring volume of visitation above a baseline measure during a specific timeframe.

For instance, at Scripps Networks Interactive, we wanted to drive traffic to very specific new sections and packages as they were launching on HGTV.com in 2005... We needed to target consumers with specific interests in key HGTV.com content, and engage them once they visited. So, we designed a campaign that utilized targeted ads on strategic search placements to reach active seekers and we designed creative that appealed to a very specific target audience. And, by continuously optimizing the campaign in real-time against those goals, we were able to be successful.

Over 74 percent of visitors driven by the various targeted search campaigns were new to HGTV.com, but more importantly, visitors viewed an average of 8.64 pages per visit, indicating both the effectiveness of the campaign in targeting potential interested visitors and the "stickiness" of HGTV landing pages and packages. Specifically, we were able to successfully target consumers with an interest in key HGTV.com content and drive them to specific landing pages.

Increasing Awareness: If you are attempting to introduce a new brand to a defined target audience, then you might consider the success of your search campaign based on the percentage of new vs. return visitors to a specific Web site. Measuring not just the volume of unique visitors generated through the search campaign, but the percentage of new visitors to the site, offers a much more insightful indication of success and a much more helpful metric to gauge your overall campaign effectiveness.

For instance, at Scripps Networks Interactive, we wanted to introduce FineLiving.com to a broader audience of those most likely to be enthusiastic about the kind of content offered on that site. We tested a paid search strategy for four month of 2005 designed specifically to increase the volume of new visitors with an interest in the site's content. By designing the campaign around that goal, we opted to utilize Google and Yahoo's contextual targeting and search programs, along with Enhance Interactive's search option to reach new visitors.

We measured the success of the search campaign by the percent of new visitors to the site, and the average number of pages viewed per visitor. At the end of the four months, the search campaign accounted for 21 percent of all visitors to FineLiving.com, but importantly, the campaign accounted for 32 percent of all new visitors to the site! In fact, the number of new visitors to the site increased 186 percent from benchmark. Furthermore, the campaign averaged over four page views per visitor overall, an increase of 48 percent from the benchmark, indicating that the audience we were reaching was enthusiastic about the content of FineLiving.com.

As both these examples illustrate, defining what success means to you is perhaps the most important first step to any search strategy. The way we designed our search strategy and measured its success differed, based on whether we were attempting to build additional awareness or drive a targeted audience to a specific area of the Web site. By ensuring that your overarching goals are clearly defined, you're measuring the success of your search campaign based on those objectives, and you're defining your primary metrics accordingly, you can make sure that you're getting a meaningful ROI.