• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 19, 2008

A push to perfect a paid search campaign during the past year has delivered Smith Micro a 70% boost in sales for three quarters, and a 14% increase in sales from Apple Mac users. Both are unusual gifts to end a rather tumultuous economic year.

Smith Micro, known for the popular compression software StuffIt Deluxe, logged a 23% quarter-over-quarter increase in paid search results, about an 80% uptick in delivery of trial products, and a 3% lift to 18% in paid search e-commerce revenue.

Getting those results was not easy. Digital River has supported Smith Micro's paid campaign for four years, but it wasn't until search, analytics and Web technologies matured in the last year that Smith Micro began to see significant return on investments.

Digital River faced numerous obstacles. Smith Micro challenged the Eden Prairie, Minn. agency to increase conversions and associated revenues from paid search, optimize keyword use to increase return on investments, connect Mac users directly to Mac-specific product pages, provide global paid search optimization to European markets, help achieve the goal to increase annual revenue by 20%, and support multiple upcoming new product introductions.

The strategy required Digital River to tie the paid search campaign to ecommerce stores, known as micro sites, built around the Smith Micro products. "So, when consumers in Google's search engine click on our ad, they'll land on a micro site without the typical Smith Micro navigational stuff," said Jim Wehmann, SVP of marketing at Digital River. "They land on the micro site through category and branded keywords such as compression utility software and StuffIt.

Wehmann said Digital River doesn't introduce the numerous branded products on the landing page because they find it easier to keep control of where potential customers go from there.

Consumers searching on StuffIt for Mac or StuffIt for PC made it easy for Digital River to identify and direct the click to the correct landing page, but what if the keywords were more generic?

Digital River solved the problem by identifying the operating system as consumers click on paid search terms. Landing the consumer on the correct page gave Smith Micro "14% of the 20% overall lift in sales," Wehmann said, explaining that the platform making it possible combines Fireclick analytics, with licensed and propriety technologies.

Initial efforts focused on Smith Micro's StuffIt Deluxe compression software for Mac and Windows PCs. Attention then turned toward other products, ranging from CheckIt Diagnostics for PC performance testing to OfficeReady for creating designer-quality business documents. Now the company is working on paid search campaigns for Anime, Poser, and Manga.

Successful paid search campaigns play off the strength of the brand, but companies that have new or lesser-known products can benefit, too. Campaigns can introduce new brands to consumers, but Wehmann advises creating awareness through generic category keywords first, rather than branded. After all, consumers don't typically key in new brand names into Google, Microsoft Live or Yahoo engines unless they specially search for the products.

Although a bit skewed in his thinking by the services Digital River offers, Wehmann said companies should "use search as a primary direct-marketing channel." Putting the emphasis on performance, however, the company works from a revenue-sharing model. "If our clients do well, we take a piece," he said. "If we don't drive sales, we don't get paid much at all."