3 Steps to Customized Landing Pages, and 3 More to Holistic Online Marketing Integration
So this was funny. Very often I will go into iMediaConnection and read an article without paying attention to the author first. I do this intentionally so that I don’t have a bias to the topic or position but rather allow myself to take the reactionary approach as objectively as possible.
Jamie Roche’s piece in today’s iMediaConnection, 3 Steps to Customized Landing Pages was a great example. Jamie describes: “…how to customize your website pages so that even when making a keyword buy of thousands, you still maximize conversions.” He does this by presenting a three-step process:
Step 1: Look at keyword groups by intention
Step 2: Break out landing pages types and create templates
Step 3: Test templates for general effectiveness
Jamie does a great job of presenting how to leverage landing pages to increase conversion potential following search marketing campaigns. As I was reading his article, I was thinking to myself, what technologies would help to accomplish these tasks? What can people use to manage their dynamic content-serving on landing pages, what tokens could be placed on browsers at the time of the search-term click-thru to associate the keyword group with a landing page topic? What site-side analytics software could track and report the metrics to evidence the performance. What cookie-related perspective would promote the ability to integrate with other forms of e-marketing media?
As I was reading, I was thinking about Offermatica. Figures that would be the case, Offermatica is perfect for dynamic landing-page creation, content testing and doing just what Jamie was talking about. So after I read the article, and went to see who the author was I start to laugh out loud because of course I know that Jamie Roche is the President of Offermatica!
So let’s talk about how the picture can be put together.
Offermatica is a great solution for doing everything Jamie describes – it’s actually an eloquent pitch and not too bias if you want to read the article. But it really represents a piece of the bigger puzzle that we try to explore today. Holistic online marketing aims to couple the outside advertising with the site-side advertising. Offermatica is the site-side solution. Once someone arrives at your site, Offermatica will help you put the right offer in front of the right person based on how you go them there. Perfect!
So how do you provide a solution like Offermatica with the information that they require to make the best decisions that they can?
The out-of-the-box solution (sort of) is to provide Offermatica with the selection criteria for testing various landing pages so that they can be rapid testing on-the-fly as your campaigns are running. On a performance basis, you can improve acquisition rates by leveraging landing page selections over time. But how do you hook-in the information so that you are producing the landing pages?
Jamie uses search campaigns as his example. What is unclear is how to determine the landing page content. Presumably it’s not on the fly. He suggests creating buckets of search term groups and then creating landing pages that correlate to those groups, probably multiple pages for each group for A/B testing.
But how about banner advertising. Also possible. The topic or creative group association of an ad can be passed through in the click-thru URL the same way and all of this can be accomplished as well.
Okay, next step…how do we leverage advancing technologies and push site-side content rendering to the next level.
But what about dynamic pages that are reacting to the search campaign?
Why can’t we leverage knowledge about previously viewed ads and the search campaign to better select landing pages? If the search term is captured in the click-thru URL and passed through to the advertiser, and knowledge about banner campaigns can be captured by cookies leveraged during the ad serving process, they should each be able to be incorporated into the rendering of a landing page. Product selection and content placement can be that much more targeted, and accurate. Not only can you line up the product placement based on the search term that a person used to get to the advertiser’s site, but you can also leverage knowledge about ads and offers that individual has seen with respect to products and offers. Ads they may have reacted to in the past as well as ads that they have not reacted to.
Offermatica can be leveraged to read the cookie in the browser as they arrive to the advertiser’s web page and react to the information stored in their browser. More valuable than the click-thru URL of the landing page, the cookie can instruct Offermatica on how to create the landing page too. Simultaneously the cookie can also share information with the advertiser’s eCRM system and site-side analytics system. We’ve been through this before.
First party cookies are obviously the way to go here. So if you talk to Jamie and his team and suggest that he accept a first party cookie – say the advertiser’s cookie, or the Offermatica cookie, then he can leverage information in that cookie to make even better decisions for you. Of course you can get in touch with me through Trueffect if you want me to better explain how TruEffect and Offermatica do this. Anyway, the first party cookie can pass through information about the banner campaign, search campaign – oooh – even an email marketing campaign. That’s right, holistic integration of the advertiser’s online marketing effort.
Landing pages can be rendered on the fly based on how someone became a lead as well as how they did not become a lead – what ads and search terms generated a response (whether they came through a banner or a search click) as well as what ads did not generate a response.
Now, when that person becomes a customer, registrant or other “known” member of your database, DirectServe™ can kick in. Now that person can be segmented for future re-targeting through all of the same channels using that initial first party cookie.
If the individual conducts a subsequent search, they will be identified upon the click-thru and the knowledge about that user will be passed through to Offermatic, who can render an appropriate landing page that is customer-specific. Offermatica can further test landing pages that are designed for returning customers. The eCRM system will capture recurring sales information about returning customers. And the site-side analytics software – say WebSideStory – will capture the entire cycle as it goes around and around: from search term to sale and from banner ad to sale, over and over, in it’s reports.
Reactionary with Insight.
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