Search marketing continuity space in SES Magazine

Here at Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York, SES Magazine published an article of mine, The 10 Factors of Search Marketing Continuity, which is based on a post I did a few months ago on search marketing continuity between keywords, ads, and landing pages.

When a respondent clicks on an ad, does the corresponding landing page — and customer experience beyond it — live up to what they were anticipating and led to believe?

Continuity is possibly the single most important factor in the success of search campaigns and their conversion rates. But although it’s straightforward in theory, real world implementation is more challenging. This is partly because there’s rarely a one-to-one match, with separate landing pages for each and every keyword and ad combination. And it’s partly because continuity is in the eye of the beholder, with different respondents bringing different assumptions to the same query.

As a result, search marketing continuity is not black-and-white, but infinite shades of gray. Your mission as a marketer is to find the optimal point on that curve for each of your campaigns.

The updated search marketing continuity space graphic that was published in the article looks like this:

If you happen to be at the show, you can catch a live discussion of search marketing continuity at 10:45am on Thursday, March 26 in the Extreme Makeover: Live Ad Copy & Continuity Clinic.

Comments

[Chris]

"there’s rarely a one-to-one match, with separate landing pages for each and every keyword..."

That's both true and unfortunate. Given how easy it is to spend massive amounts of money on SEM, there are few excuses for not putting the requisite effort into matching landing pages to keywords and ads. I still cannot believe how many companies (in many cases companies with massive marketing budgets and - one would assume - staff of knowledgeable, motivated people) I see using their homepage as the destination URL for all of their Adwords ads.

To your second point, "there’s rarely a one-to-one match, with separate landing pages for each and every keyword and ad combination." This is a little tougher, but using a personalization or targeting engine landing pages can include dynamic content based on explicit information, like time of day or geographic location for each specific visitor, getting a marketer that much closer to a seamless fit.

I'm sorry I'm going to miss the show, though - looks great.

Chris