Optimize This…

Shane L Wagg

Director of Marketing

Rugman.com

August 9, 2006

One Simple Take Away Today…

OPTIMIZE EVERYTHING

• Optimize Your Content• Optimize Your Keywords• Optimize Your Paid Content• Optimize Your Budget• Optimize Your Day Parts• Optimize Your Promotions• Optimize Your Seasonality• Optimize For Things You Know• Know When To Quit Optimizing

Personal Bias/Full Disclosure

Organic Guy

• Sustained results (over years)• Amortized costs ($ millions)• More control

Inhouse Focused

• More control• Managed expectations• Holistic focus

SALES

25% More Orders

100% More Revenue

PAID PLACEMENT

ROI

500% Less Cost

vs ORGANIC

5 Benefits Of A Paid Placement Strategy

1. Immediacy – Set up and active within 30 minutes.

2. Budget – Fully transparent cost and ROI.

3. Targeting – Who you want; where you want.

4. Timing – Who you want; when you want.

5. Control – On again; off again. At will.

Optimize Your Content – “large wool area rugs”

5 listings: ebay/FroogleRugman/FroogleAdwordsebay/OrganicRugman/Organic

Optimize Your Content – “large wool area rugs”

In addition to Froogle and ebay listings,the “5 Star” user rating comes fromShopzilla.

3 different data sources pulled into onechannel with optimize carried across all.

Optimize Your Keywords

Not all keywords are created equally; some cost more than others(singular vs plural); some convert better than others (exact versusbroad); and some are searched with more more frequency thanother close matches.

While labor intensive, invest the time in micromanaging yourkeywords. The result: increase clickthrough (> 65%); increasedbudget longevity; and ultimately increased sales.

Optimize Your Paid Content

PPC is about more than clickthrough and conversion.

True story. In an attempt to shore up month end, our company launched a clearance sale while I was on vacation, a strategy that has worked in years passed, but this year, not so much.

The difference? Our positioning has moved away from price and into a luxurysell. Our PPC reflected a luxury statement while the web site was heavy on aseverely discounted sell which cost us credibility and ultimately even themost basic sales.

By changing the site message, without changing the discount,we increased sales by over 600% overnight. And we got a newselling strategy.

Optimize Your Budget

Your budget can serve as a key performance indicator (KPI).

A daily report (previous and mid-day) can be a harbinger of variations in traffic fromPPC. (Particularly during summer months when search traffic fluctuates.

By optimizing our budget, we’ve increased conversions and sales overall.

We’ve also used our budget allocation to define two PPC strategies for us.

In one instance, by optimizing our budget on a keyword by keyword basis, we identified valuable converting keywords that were exhausting too early in the day.

On the other side of the equation, we’re better able to accommodate for trafficfluctuations.

That, by the way, is not quite as easy as it may seem. For us, weneed to increase traffic exponentially while reducing costs of thattraffic by half. But having optimized our budget for betterperformance, we have a better indication of what terms toplug in, when, and at what cost.

Optimize Your Day Parts

As with costs, not all clicks are the same.

A recent Money Magazine/ICR poll revealed that 23 percent of men with a spouse or partner said they have - or would consider - spending $1,000 or more without telling their significant other, compared to 13 percent of women.

That may seem trivial, but then again maybe not. With an average order value north of $800, we’ve found that clicks by night convert higher than clicks by day.

One possible reason, with a purchase point that high, it needs household discussion. So while an afternoon click may be research, a night click has a higherpropensity to be money in the bank.

How much more? A 63% revenue increase warranting a budgetthat could be metered out across the whole day.

By the way, according to Shop.org and Cyber Dialogue, nearly half of Web users (46% of women and 47% of men) say they've become late-night shoppers, using the Internet as "the mall that never closes."

Optimize Your Promotions

As marketers, we schedule promotions by creating our campaigns, posting themand moving on to the next one.

We’re exploring treating our promotions as content and building out sections for them. Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentines.

Christmas may only come once a year, but people in search of Christmas show up all year long.

Building out lasting, static content for promotions seasons is a long tail strategythat can benefit you long before or after the season has passed.

Instead of building out a list of value priced “gift ideas” build out acontent section that gives that product listing better context.

Pre Actual Post

Understand pre, actual and post seasonality across search terms:

• Christmas gifts

• Christmas flowers

• Christmas

• Christmas gift cards

• Christmas gift ideas

• Christmas gift baskets

• Christmas gift certificates

• Christmas trees

• Nightmare Before Christmas

• Christmas cards

Top 10 “Christmas” Searches Jan 2006

Optimize Your Seasonality

By optimizing your keywords and your budget, you’re better prepared to optimizefor seasonality.

As I mentioned earlier, a daily report informs me of site traffic patterns.

That extends into traffic seasonality. Particularly for holiday seasons and vacationseasons.

We can accurately forecast which keywords segments to implement against whichcost to shore up against seasonal traffic fluctuations. This has proved invaluableparticularly during the summer months.

We’ve also used this information to optimize against our datafeeds,particularly those that have a cost per product listing fee whichwe can adjust up or down, listing more or fewer againstseasonal traffic patterns.

Optimize For Things You Know

Things change fast in this industry and because we’re at the mercy of things wecan’t see, it’s hard to know when and how to react and respond.

Staying on top of everything, every day can be exhausting.

The fundamentals, however, do not change. Business models are predicated onon very basic tenets that necessarily cannot change to dramatically.

Take the time to understand how each search channel can benefit you and use thatinformation to the best of your capability.

One of the topics I keep hearing this week is how this engine indexes easierthan that engine. That’s good news. If that engine as 8, 10, 12or 25% of searches, 8, 10, 12 or 25% of your efforts should see a Return that much faster.

And test constantly. If you have the time, the patience and thecuriosity, set up a test site so you can test without compromisingall of your work.

Know When To Quit Optimizing

Searches Google.com Google.ca Yahoo.com Yahoo.ca

Oriental Rugs 29 2, 3 16 2

Persian Rugs 12 1, 2 9 2

Area Rugs 20 1, 2 20 4

Rugs 80 1 40 6

In Summary

Optimize everything.

The tools now exist to optimize keywords, contents, budgets, day parts and sitetraffic. Understand them and exploit them to best advantage.

Don’t forsake organic for paid and vice versa. Both are valuable parts of your SEMstrategy and in an environment of quick change we can’t fully know how one affectsthe other.

Don’t play favorites with search engines and channels, each serves a differentaudience segment and the one that brings the most traffic may not be the onethat converts the best.

Know when to stop. If you’ve done all you can possibly do, it’s not time to admit defeat, it’s time to explore a new strategy.

Thanx.

shanew@rugman.com