Pulling Levers Blog

It’s 4:00pm CT on the Friday, we’re taking a break on the blog from the normal business of online marketing and focusing on what everyone else is talking about this weekend- the Super Bowl!

Head over to the Lever Interactive Facebook page and cast your prediction for 2012 Super Bowl champion.

Currently the Giants are just edging out the Patriots in our highly scientific poll. With “Who cares, I’m just watching for the commercials” coming in a close third.

And as someone who grew up almost directly half way between Boston and New York, with my mom from Massachusetts and my dad from New York, my vote could really go either way.  I’m not a fan of either team (Go Ravens! or Jets!), so for me it comes down to which team I dislike the least…the New York Giants.

Stay tuned next week for our blog post about Lever’s favorite Super Bowl commercials and best integrations into online marketing campaigns.

When a well-known, furniture retailer and manufacturer contracted Lever Interactive to manage their paid search campaign, they had several goals they wanted to achieve.  Besides the most common goal we hear from all of our clients (please make our campaigns more efficient!), they wanted to make sure they were spending money in the right locations.  Their unique challenge is that they are in 26 different DMAs across the United States with over 100 corporate store locations, and their goal is driving foot traffic to a store; not an online purchase or lead.

Previous to contracting Lever, this furniture retailer was working with another agency that targeted all 26 DMAs within each Google AdWords campaign.  While it is great that they were targeting each of the markets, there were several problems we isolated right out of the gate.

1)      With all DMAs combined, the retailer had limited insight into which markets where driving conversions or cost. 

2)      They were unable to control budget by DMA; one of the client’s ultimate goals. 

DMAs are different shapes and sizes depending on the area.  We discovered the previous agency was targeting DMAs without consideration of store locations. In one market, for example, they were targeting a huge metropolis but their store location was actually on the very outskirts of the DMA.  The DMA spanned over 100 miles from one end to the other…which is a long way to drive to see furniture!

 

So, after digging into their historical data and identifying their “pain points” and objectives, we started outlining our process for restructuring the account with the following goals in mind:

1)      The retailer needed comprehensive, DMA level performance data so they could make better informed decisions on where to allocate their media spend based on in-store and web traffic.

2)      They needed to know that the users they were targeting geographically were qualified, and most likely to translate into store traffic. (Conversions were tracked based on visits to the store locator page).

In the end, Lever decided to restructure the account based on DMA, with a new account for each DMA, all housed under one MCC. This extensive campaign restructuring, that focused on store specific campaigns and included geo-targeting adjustments, help achieve our client’s goals.  In just a few months, we were able to:

• Decrease CPAs between 15-30% month over month since the account restructure.
• Allocate budget amongst all 26 DMAs with budget goals that are dependent on in-store traffic.  For example, if one market has been having slow foot traffic, then DMA budget is readjusted so that market can drive more web traffic in an effort to increase in-store traffic.
• Reduce spend 44% month over month in their most troubled DMA that was producing unqualified traffic.  This also reduced the DMA’s CPA by 54%.

Congratulations to Danyl Herron, celebrating her 3-year anniversary at Lever Interactive this month. Danyl started with Lever in January 2009.

Now as a Senior Account Strategist, she manages her clients’ online marketing campaigns; including Paid Search, Shopping Comparison, Affiliate Marketing and Email Marketing. At home Danyl enjoys spending time with her husband Mike, step-daughter Abby and one-year-old daughter Anna.

Learn more about Danyl Herron.

 

What they are and how will they affect the Facebook timeline and marketers?

Facebook launched the highly anticipated “Open Graph” apps last week, announcing new partnerships with 60 app developers, with many more to come.  Open Graph apps will enable the Facebook Timeline to track a user’s activity on and offline, with these apps posting on behalf of the user.  Companies such as Pinterest, Urbanspoon and Zynga will proactively engage with a user’s timeline, once permission has been granted, and post interactions that the user has had with products, services, news outlets, recipes they’ve tried and more.

This is a huge step forward for Facebook in its goal to make the new Timeline a true record of a user’s life and times.  But what does this mean for the average user?  Well other than making it easier for users to share and interact with one another (which can be seen as a positive or a negative, depending on with whom you speak), I’m not sure that this strays much at all from the culture that Facebook has already created. 

I remember reading blogs and opinions online months ago when the concept was first announced at the f8 conference of people debating whether or not this was just another way for Facebook to exploit its users and infringe on their privacy.  In my opinion, if you are willing to post the most intimate details of your life anywhere on the internet – Facebook page or otherwise – you’re putting any personal privacy under fire. Plus, as with other apps on Facebook, you will need to give permission for these new ones to work with your timeline.

Facebook has been a little shady in the past with its privacy policies and practices, but they are quick to right themselves – even if it does usually take a severe blasting online and in the media before doing so.  Users need to be careful.  If you’re willing to spend hours of your day on Facebook posting, playing games, chatting and the like – take a few moments every once and a while to pay attention to your privacy settings and you should be fine.

What do Open Graph apps mean for online marketers?

Now going above and beyond the everyday user experience, this does have some possibly major implications for online marketers. Facebook is very aware of the advertising revenue that the site generates each year (over $3.8 billion in 2011, up from $1.86 billion in 2010 according to Emarketer Inc.), and it seems to be constantly looking for new ways its advertisers can better target its users. These Open Graph apps are the latest tool to do that.

Don’t let them fool you. Facebook has positioned itself as the #1 social networking site in the world; however it is also one of the largest advertising outlets as well.  The Open Graph apps will allow marketers to present their products and services in front of the eyes of their exact demographics as they’ve been able to do with Facebook’s intricate targeting options. The interactions with these apps will play on the same concept of the popular marketing tool known as Sponsored Stories, providing outlets for advertisers to market to users who “Like” them and their friends (who will hopefully turn in to more of those who “Like”).  The difference here is the apps will allow the sponsorship to come more directly from the friend instead of from the brand; theoretically having a more powerful effect and endorsement for people seeing these purchases and interactions.

Communities such as Pinterest that are gaining in popularity can (and will) quickly move from a cult following to a sensation. Not only are these apps great for increasing brand awareness, but with so many inbound links the advertising (and SEO) potential on these sites will increase exponentially.

Client: Established in-store marketing company expanding into the online segment of their business with a new website that offers free printable coupons from consumer packaged goods manufacturers.

Challenge: Launching a new website in fall 2010, Lever Interactive’s client was starting from scratch in terms of organic search results. The website’s initial design was developed and launched without taking into consideration basic SEO or conversion optimization best practices. In addition, competition among keywords related to coupons is high and the client needed to quickly establish their brand and website as an online industry leader.

Approach: Lever started from the ground up in their SEO approach since the website was brand new. The first focus was on improving the website and its content, secondly an active off-site link building campaign was launched.

Tactics: Lever Interactive conducted an S.W.O.T. analysis of the website to identify and prioritize ways to improve the site’s content, backend functionality in terms of SEO and visitor usability.

On-page tactics derived from the audit covered a wide-range of SEO best practices, some included:

• Page load time improvements through page size and code weight updates
• Development of new or improved page titles, headings, meta content and on-page content
• New URL structure, 404 error processes, robots.txt and XML sitemap file development
• Target keyword identification and integration into content and interlinking strategies

Off-page link building strategies started off with basic tactics that focused on top priority keywords (did not include any paid link building). Lever then moved into more advanced social link building strategies, such as:

• Relevant article and press release optimization and syndication
• Online video optimization and distribution
• Blog and forum participation

Results: Lever’s SEO team is continuing to work with the client to develop and distribute superior content both on and off the site. In the first 8 months of engagement, the client’s new site saw tremendous organic growth. With no previous keyword rankings, Lever was able to gain page one rankings on several highly competitive general terms such as coupon, coupons, printable coupon and coupons online. Organic traffic increased from less than 2,000 visits per month to over 150,000 visits.

If you’re new to affiliate marketing, you may be wondering where to start. If you’re currently running an affiliate program in-house or through a network, you may be wondering if there’s a better fit out there for you. In working with several different retail clients, the Lever Interactive affiliate marketing team has been able to identify a few main points to consider when selecting an affiliate network as well as the strengths and weaknesses of two of the top networks.

Things to Consider:

1. Network start-up costs

Most affiliate networks charge an initial one-time setup fee ranging from about $500 to over $2,000. This includes the technical set-up of the account and getting new advertisers educated about the network.

Some of the smaller affiliate networks, including LinkConnector, don’t charge a setup fee, but keep in mind that the number and quality of affiliates within the network will most likely be low compared to those in the more expensive networks.

2. Monthly minimun

All affiliate networks charge a transaction fee, which is just a small percentage of the commission paid out to each affiliate for each sale. What you need to look out for is the monthly minimum, which is the amount in transaction fees an affiliate network requires each month. So if the monthly minimum is $100, and you only pay the network $75 in transaction fees, you will owe an additional $25 at the end of the billing cycle.

This varies widely from network to network, so depending on the volume of sales and revenue you expect to come through affiliates, you will want to choose a network with a suitable monthly minimum.

3. Span of affiliate network

If you have certain affiliates in mind, you’ll want to make sure they’re in the network you plan on joining. You can either look them up within each network, or you can contact them directly to find out. However, if you’re new to affiliate marketing, you’ll probably need a network that provides a large affiliate base from which to choose. As mentioned earlier, this could mean higher setup costs and monthly minimums, but it may be worth it in the long run.

4. Ease of communication

Ongoing communication with affiliates is essential to maintaining a successful relationship. You’ll need to send out regular newsletters with tantalizing incentives to ensure you stay top-of-mind within the affiliate community. Read about each network’s messaging capabilities ahead of time so you know what to expect. Make sure there are no costs involved and that the process of formatting and sending out the emails is simple and not time-consuming.

5. Tracking & reporting capabilities

The nice thing about using a network to manage your affiliate program is that they provide tracking and reporting for you. In addition to basic transaction reports, each network has their own unique reporting features, including performance by link type and affiliate first sale reports. Choose a network that will provide you with the type of reporting that best suits your company’s needs.

6. Customer support

If you’re used to running things on your own, this may not be as important, but if you’re new to affiliate marketing, you may have a lot of questions at the beginning. Read up on reviews and ask others in your industry about the customer support they’ve received on their affiliate networks.

7. Multiple networks

If you have the time and money, you can join multiple networks, widening your pool of potential affiliates. However, many of the bigger “super affiliates” are actually members of a variety of networks themselves, meaning you can find them on almost any network you select. Therefore, when managing affiliate programs on multiple networks, you face the issue of duplicate (and sometimes triplicate) transactions. So at the end of the month, there is the extra step of determining which network and which affiliate should receive the commissions and voiding the sales on the other network(s).

Reviewing Two of the Top Affiliate Networks:

Commission Junction

Pros:

• Large number of affiliates within network
• Detailed reporting
• No extra cost for sending newsletters to existing affiliates
• Ability to search for new affiliates within interface
• Ability to auto-approve/auto-decline affiliates based on certain criteria
• New PayPerCall feature offers an additional way to increase sales
• Responsive customer support representatives

Cons:

• High network setup fee
• High monthly minimum ($500 in transaction fees)
• Higher than average transaction fee (30% of commission)
• Historical reports can only be accessed for up to one year
• Cost to implement product fees

ShareASale

Pros:

• Reasonable setup fee ($550)
• Low monthly minimum ($25 in transaction fees)
• Low transaction fee (20% of commission)
• Detailed reporting
• No extra cost for setting up product feed
• Responsive customer support representatives

Cons:

• Smaller number of affiliates within network
• Cannot easily search for new affiliates within interface
• Reports must be exported as pipe-delimited files

On this snowy Friday in Chicago, we wanted to send you off on your weekend with some football fun… fantasy football that is.

2011 was the inaugural season of the Lever Interactive Fantasy Football League. Below is a recap of some of the highs and lows of the season.

Half of the Lever Interactive team had never played fantasy football before. Despite a lack of experience, two of the newbies – Brad Bonic and Chris Gilmartin – were able to place in the top eight with the six seasoned fantasy football veterans. When asked how he was able to achieve such success so early his career, Brad credited his ability to work the waiver wire to the bid management skills he developed while working on paid search campaigns and attributed his ability to fine-tune his line-ups to the search engine optimization skills he has honed during his tenure here at Lever. Chris declined to comment to the media on his team’s 2011 performance.

Notable Single Game Performances

1. 145 Points – Ottawa River Boats week four.
2. 135 Points – Team Bulldogs week two.
3. 131 Points – Ottawa River Boats week two.

1. 35 Points – Team Herron week eleven.
2. 39 Points – Team Hanson week seven.
3. 39 Points – Team Forte Yard Dash week twelve.

*Bench points were used as tie breaker – Team Hanson had 5 in week seven and Team Forte Yard Dash had 29 in week twelve.

1. Team Cole beats Team Johnson 129 to 40 week eight.
2. Team Bulldogs beats Team Forte Yard Dash 135 to 70 week two.
3. Team Davis beats Team Cole 115 to 58 week seven.

And in the end, congratulations to Mike Hanson for an underdog win in the inaugural Lever Fantasy Football Super Bowl!

 The decision to form the league was made after the first week of the regular season.  Instead of retroactively playing week one, we opted to zero out the point totals giving everyone at least one tie.

Whenever you engage a client in link building services, it’s important to demonstrate success to your client throughout and after the project. Part of quantifying your SEO efforts is reporting on the quantity of links to your targeted site or URL. That’s not to say that quantity is the sole focus of link building, but if you are performing a variety of optimizations for a client and only have a short amount of time for reporting, you want to be able to point to link acquisition without fancy screen shots and long explanations.

Now that Yahoo’s Site Explorer tool has been retired, SEOs have to regroup and find another reliable, simple source for checking backlinks without reinventing their reporting format. This is especially difficult because each tool typically reports different backlink counts. I’m going to profile a few of the popular tools. I’ll only be looking at the free versions since they are more easily accessible to all link builders and optimizers. Finally, I’ll leave you with my recommendation for reliable backlink checking and reporting. (I will be using our domain, www.leverinteractive.com for all examples.)

www.OpenSiteExplorer.org – This free link checking tool is great if you’re only checking 3 sites a day since it limits you to only 3 domain queries in a 24 hour period. It shows a few of their own unique metrics, but also shows Linking Root Domains and Total Links, which are universally important. You can use both of those metrics to measure growth month over month. In the free version, you can also get a glimpse of the top pages on your site acquiring links, the top domains linking to your site, anchor text and some other stats. However, the daily limit of 3 queries can make competitive analysis or new client prospecting difficult. Open Site Explorer is powered and maintained by SEOmoz. Use this tool for: setting a benchmark for a new client, reporting

www.MajesticSEO.com – This tool reports the number of referring domains and the number of backlinks. While the Open Site Explorer teases you to join the paid plan with a brief look at your referring domains and anchor text, Majestic SEO gives you great visuals for reporting. It also provides a historical index and a fresh index, showing you recent link count as well as a cumulative link count. Worth noting- my personal experience with customer service has been great, especially for a free too. I’ve tweeted at Majestic SEO with a few questions and received positive responses immediately, which leads me to believe their customer service and brand management are both very strong. Use this tool for: setting a benchmark for a new client, reporting, prospecting potential clients, quick competitive analysis

www.Alexa.com: Alexa also provides backlink data for free. This screenshot shows 46 backlinks to our domain. Clicking on the 46 reveals the list of domains as well as the URL linking to the specified domain. The list will max out at 100, so if you want to report on over 100 backlinks with this level of detail, you’ll be out of luck. Use this tool for: deep level linking detail for clients or competitive analysis

Google Webmasters Tools: Not many SEOs report backlink numbers from Google Webmasters because it’s notorious for reporting a low count of links. While this is true, most clients value Google data above other engines, and since Google offers a free, consistent and accurate backlink report, it’s worth including in your web analytics reports. The plus side is that while these other tools may change without notice, Google Webmaster is likely here to stay, so you don’t have to worry about your backlink checking tool disappearing.

You’ll notice that with these three screen shots, each site is reporting different numbers. This is inevitable. The simpler you make your reporting, the simpler it will be to explain to your client. Don’t start taking averages between sites and choosing the highest count each month from any source. If you want a reliable backlink checking tool, I suggest using data supplied from Google Webmasters. The backlink count gets updated frequently and it’s consistent month over month. Whichever source you choose, just be sure that your reporting is consistent and that if your client checks their backlink count using a different tool, prepare them with an explanation of why they may see a different count.

You’ve heard the stats before- 800 million active users, over half of them logging on in any given day, 350 million mobile users- Facebook has become a dominant part of the online world. 

So how do businesses begin to leverage their Facebook presence?  One element to consider is a Facebook landing page. Instead of the fan page wall, the landing page can be the first thing a visitor sees when they reach your page. This allows you to control your first impression and it can help turn a visitor into a fan. Custom landing pages have been around for a little while now, but with more businesses getting involved in Facebook every day, we wanted to take a look at the basics of designing and launching a Facebook landing page.

Designing Your Landing Page

The main thing you need to remember while designing your landing page is the layout cannot be wider than 520 pixels; the height is up to you. Two best practices to incorporate into your page – include design elements from your current website and brand and include a call-to-action button near the top or use an arrow to point to the page’s like button. In Lever’s case I put a “Click The Like Button” graphic under the logo as well as the “Like Lever Interactive” text in the final paragraph. Below is another example from one of our clients (we did not design this page).

Developing Your Landing Page
Developing your landing page can range from easy to difficult depending on which method you choose and your level of understanding HTML. One of the easiest ways to develop the page is to install apps.

• Wildfire’s iFrame for Pages App is among the easiest to use and includes custom HTML and image options and Fan Gate (Like Gate) options. An example for using this app would be a landing page with one image (either upload from the app or stored on your server) that links to a page on your site.Fan Gating or Like Gating requires a user to “Like” your page before they can receive the desired content, gain access to information or enter a contest or sweepstakes.
  Difficulty Level: Low – Moderate
• Static FBML (Facebook Markup Language) is another free app that will add a box to your page in which you can render HTML or FBML for customization. An example for using this app would be a landing page that has three paragraphs with different keywords bolded and an image near the top. The page is coded in HTML and the image is stored on your server.
  Difficulty Level: Low – Moderate
• Facebook Developers Page  allows you to build with Open Graph and integrate your app with Facebook’s core experience. An example for using this app would be a landing page that includes a sign up form that connects directly to your company’s database.
  Difficulty Level: Moderate – High

Landing Page Options
After the landing page has been created you will need to edit some settings so this page is the first thing visitors see, instead of your wall. From your landing page click Edit Page in the upper right. Note: You will need to be logged in and an admin to edit the page.

If you’ve installed an app choose the Apps link and then the Edit Settings Link under your apps name. You can now change the title of the tab. By default Wildfire’s apps tab is labeled Welcome.

After you’ve made the change, click Manage Permissions and look for the Default Landing Tab option. Choose the name of your app and click Save Changes.

You landing page is now the first thing visitors will see if they are not already a fan. To test your new landing page, log out of your account and visit your fan page.

Studies have shown that Facebook landing pages convert better than just having the wall show first. Keep your landing page simple and show content that will intrigue your visitors. If you are running a contest or have an item you give away for free, Fan Gating is a great option to increase your Likes.  Here are some more examples to get your creative juices flowing.

Do you or your company have a Facebook landing page or did you create one after reading this post? Leave a comment below with a link to your Facebook landing page.

An Online Marketing Case Study

Client:

A large, private university with multiple campuses across the United States.

Challenge:

Lever Interactive was hired to manage a university’s existing online advertising pay-per-click (PPC) program to generate prospective student leads. The main goal of the program was to increase the overall number of leads, with a concentration on growing lead counts and efficiency from non-branded keywords.
Often organizations rely on the efficiency and ease of brand keywords in PPC campaigns to off-set under-performing non-branded campaigns. However, it is vital for any successful PPC campaign to maintain and grow efficient non-branded campaigns because this is where more volume and untapped audiences exist.

Approach:

Lever Interactive took over the existing campaigns and performed an audit of the account’s keywords, ads, landing pages, bids and budgets. Using custom reports that provided keyword level trending data, Lever quickly identified over- and under-performing areas of the account. After a full analysis, Lever began testing new bidding strategies, landing page designs and ad extensions.

Tactics:

• Optimization of existing Google search and display network advertising and Bing/Yahoo search advertising, including but not limited to:
• Paused inefficient non-brand keywords
• Increased bidding to better compete with the industry and run ads in higher positions. Higher bids were facilitated with increased budgets following tests that proved the effectiveness of this approach
• Increased use of ad extensions, including sitelinks and call extensions
• Tested landing pages to improve conversion rates
• Launched Facebook and LinkedIn PPC advertising
• Launched direct display buys from reputable websites in the campus’ markets

Results:

Two months after taking over management of the PPC program, Lever Interactive was able to generate significant lead growth in non-brand campaigns, as well as incremental growth in brand leads. Overall efficiency of the campaigns also improved simultaneous with the lead growth.
In the first 5 months of Lever’s management:

• Overall number of leads increased 222%
• Non-brand leads increased 512%
• Brand leads increased 133%
• Cost-per-lead (brand and non-brand) decreased 44%