Suzy Sandberg

Using Web Analytics to Troubleshoot Weak Sales

Posted on July 8, 2010 by Suzy Sandberg

Every year during the week of 4th of July, we hear from a handful of retail clients that demand is unusually low.  The initial suspicion is that there is a problem with the online marketing campaigns adversely affecting sales.  After noticing a fairly consistent pattern over time, we have learned that there’s usually not a problem with the campaigns. Rather, our experience has shown that consumer interest is unusually low this week.  Vacations, travel, entertaining, the beach, and the heat are likely reasons.  Apparel retail is at the tail end of the summer stock, with most merchandise on sale and Fall lines not yet in.  Back to school is still a week or two away.  Basically, in the past, this particular week has seen a deep loll in consumer interest in shopping.

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Facebook’s Open Graph: Pros, Cons and the Future

Posted on May 10, 2010 by PM Digital

PM Digital bloggers weigh-in on Facebook’s Open Graph.

Marketing Opportunities vs. Privacy

Suzy Sandberg:  When I first heard the details of Open Graph, I immediately went into Facebook to turn the feature off.  Facebook went with a pre-checked box to enable the Open Graph feature which requires unchecking to opt out.   We’ve seen this before — a Facebook platform change with privacy implications where the user must seek out and select new privacy settings in the application to undo a new feature.

Open Graph is getting buzz for two reasons:  one is its ability to socialize the internet in a new, unique way.  The other is the emergence of new privacy concerns, of which Facebook has already had its share of in the past.  Are the benefits of Open Graph really worth the positive buzz?  And/or how much of the privacy concerns are just noise?

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Keyword Selection for Paid Search

Posted on April 19, 2010 by Suzy Sandberg

It often seems like a race to keep up with the escalating complexity of paid search. From an agency perspective, changes to process, technology and training are frequently necessary in order to accommodate the evolution. Many of these changes enable us to move the needle here and there on leveraging performance, but the core of a solid paid search campaign hasn’t really changed that much.

Paid search is fundamentally about presenting a relevant ad to someone who enters a keyword in a search engine. Every month, 60% of the searches on Google are brand new. With the keyword list being the pillar of the paid search campaign, keyword selection is essential. Technology now exists to scrape a page and cull a list, but the fundamental strategies for effective keyword selection remain the same now as they have been for years. Here are some of the basic keyword selection tactics that apply to the retail vertical.

Top Sellers: Site analytics can determine the top selling products through direct load and natural search. These words should be part of the paid search campaign.

Top Searched Products on the Site: Site analytics can inform what people are searching for on the site, and these words should be included in the paid search campaign. Products being searched for but not sold by the merchant should be given to the merchandising team to potentially expand the product line.

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What the iPad Means for Marketers

Posted on April 13, 2010 by PM Digital

Now that we’ve have had a week to put the new iPad through its paces, we asked our PM Digital bloggers for their thoughts on the device with an eye to its potential for marketers.  Below are some of their initial impressions and takeaways.


OS4 Will Make the iPad Truly “Magical and Revolutionary”

Chris Paradysz:  OS4 will have multi-tasking capabilities.  Now, I love the iPad.  I can be excited about any great technology, but it should fulfill the hope I had back when I blogged about it earlier in the year that it will create an intimacy bond between content and users.

Music, video, words, pictures should no longer be disconnected from touch and feel.  The iPod and iPhone didn’t transform this connection with people (consumers).  With the portability, size and weight of the iPad well-suited to most people’s hands and laps, it can easily move from one position to another and from one person to another.

From a marketing pov, this creates a new experience sensation and viral ability that prior e-readers have failed to deliver.  Within an app or the internet, an advertiser can deliver a rich brand or offer experience, not just ink on “paper”.   With the iAd and technology infrastructure to support it, I have two questions:  1) how soon will it be before Apple starts up an advertising agency; 2) will a new SNL Apple skit be on this Saturday night?


A Must-Have Device You Didn’t Know You Needed

Suzy Sandberg: Just to get this out of the way, YES, the iPad does look like a giant iPod Touch. (iPad owners, I feel your pain on this relentless comment).  And since I can’t strap the iPad to my arm when I go running, I do still need my iPod Touch. And I still need my laptop since the iPad has limitations (no USB for one). I also have/need a cell phone until/unless Verizon ever actually does get the iPhone.

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Google Remarketing: CPC Pricing Model Has Edge over Competitors

Posted on April 6, 2010 by Suzy Sandberg

Google has launched a remarketing product with similar functionality to what the other big remarketing providers offer (Acerno, Dotomi, Advertising.com, etc).  The technical implementation is about the same.  A Google pixel needs to be installed on the advertiser’s website which facilitates the remarketing.  When a visitor comes to the website and leaves without taking the desired action (buying, inquiring, etc), the person will be subsequently shown display (or text) ads in an effort to lure the person back to the site. These ads will follow the person around the internet provided that the sites they visit are within Google’s network.  The size of Google’s network is on par with that of the other big ad networks, so from an audience perspective, the reach is competitive.

The way Google has chosen to price this product, however, sets it apart from the other remarketing providers.  Google’s structure is CPC, whereas the other companies charge CPM or CPA.  Cost-wise, the CPC model has a clear advantage.  Comparatively, the cost savings to the advertiser can be huge.

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Google Betas: Paid Search Enhancements Are Welcome and Long Overdue

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Suzy Sandberg

In 2009, Google released a slew of paid search betas mostly to support retail advertisers.  These betas are, where applicable, being rolled out to other verticals too.  Examples include GAN Product Ads, Product Plus Box (renamed Product Extensions) and Ad Sitelinks which we wrote about late last year.

Google is heavily diversifying these days, rolling out a smorgasbord of new initiatives.   Tangentially, most enhancements are related to where search is now and/or where search is going in the future.  These are welcome innovations in that they focus on how paid ads are displayed to searchers.  Up until last year, paid search display had been remarkably stagnant:  one to four shaded sponsored listings at the top of Page 1 and the rest running stacked along the right.   

Google Paid Search Display

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Facebook CPC Ads: How Big Can They Be in the Media Mix?

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Suzy Sandberg

Facebook CPC advertising, which started to gain traction with advertisers last year, resembles the early days of paid search marketing.  Launching a campaign is done in a do-it-yourself interface, and that interface is where bidding is established, payment is done by credit card, ads are created and messages targeted.  Also akin to paid search circa 2001 is that the execution of a campaign is mostly a manual process (as of yet there is no API).

As we saw with search, there is no doubt that Facebook’s features and tools will become more sophisticated and radically improve over time.  Facebook would surely like to monetize its 450 million users, and we know there are enhancements to the program already in the works.  With the attractive CPC pricing model, Facebook and would-be Facebook advertisers are lined up and waiting to sync up with APIs or at minimum, get easy access to reporting and some kind of bid management tool.

Looking into the future, could Facebook CPC ads ever become a force to be reckoned with in the media mix, matching or even exceeding paid search as a proportion of total online spend?

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New Google Policy for Online Pharmacies Causes Some Google Campaigns to Go Dark

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Suzy Sandberg

Google has implemented a new policy affecting Internet pharmacies, HMO pharmacies, chain drugstores, and mass retailer pharmacies.  Such companies must now be certified by The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) through its Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites (VIPPS) program in order for Google paid search keyword campaigns to be approved.  This policy extends to keywords associated with any merchandise on a website that sells pharmaceuticals – not just pharmaceutical products.

For those still awaiting VIPPS certification, Google shut down all keywords across all campaigns beginning last weekend.  Many companies were affected by the policy and few were prepared.  The implications of what Google would do and when they would do it were not clear enough.  A week later, many of these companies remain dark on Google paid search.  A great deal of revenue has been and continues to be lost while these pharmaceutical companies scramble to rectify the situation.

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Guide to Online Marketing Conferences and Trade Shows, Part 2

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Suzy Sandberg

Below is the second installment of our trade show roundup with thoughts and recommendations for some of the key conferences for online marketers.

Internet Retailer – Internet Retailer currently hosts two key shows each year – the Web Design & Usability Conference which was just held last week in Orlando, and the larger Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in June.  This year’s main conference will be in Chicago from June 8-11.   If you are actively involved in web design, the February show would be valuable to attend.  For more general retail info, I am a big fan of the June show.  It draws a huge crowd (great for networking and exhibiting), and there is a ton of great content.  Our clients also rate this show highly for value and time well invested. 

Shop.org – Shop.org hosts several conferences throughout the year.  The best known and largest of all the online retail shows is the Shop.org Annual Summit in the fall.  This show has frequently been held in Las Vegas , but it’s moving to Dallas for 2010.  The change is unfortunate as I predict they are going to take a hit on attendance.  The Mandalay Bay venue in Las Vegas was much loved and Dallas pales by comparison.  The Shop.org shows have the reputation of being extremely retailer-focused, as opposed to eTail which is more vendor-focused.  Shop.org has retailer-only days and retailer-only events.  But despite their somewhat heavy-handed non-vendor stance, there are many sponsorships available to vendors, although some (like the vendor-hosted tables on retailer-only day) come with a pretty hefty price tag.

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Guide to Online Marketing Conferences and Trade Shows, Part 1

Posted on February 23, 2010 by Suzy Sandberg

I am frequently asked which of the industry trade shows are worth attending.  While PM Digital can’t attend every event, we do have better visibility to these shows than most, so below is the first of two installments that cover our thoughts and recommendations on the ever-expanding online marketing conference landscape.

Because PM Digital has a heavy penetration of retail clients, we attend many conferences in the retail category as will be evident in this roundup.  The list below takes into account that there are generally three reasons to attend trade shows:  1) networking, 2) keeping current, and 3) investigating new technologies.

eTail - eTail hosts two big shows each year.  eTail West (which starts today) is the larger and runs from February 22-24 in Palm Desert; eTail East will be held in Baltimore from August 9-12.   I personally love the timing of the February eTail show since it’s the first big event after the holiday season.  People have had a few weeks to relax and breathe, but they also recognize that now is the time to launch new initiatives in order to maximize the next year-end holiday.  Attendees are definitely looking and researching at this conference.

A common criticism of the eTail shows is that it seems partial to vendors rather than retailers, and this manifests itself in sessions that occasionally sound like paid commercials.  Many of the session panels include vendors, and there are some big keynote slots given to vendors (and as a vendor, we are aware that there is a cost to speak at this show as well as some of the other events).   I once left a multivariate testing session and found one of the companies represented on the panel was also the manning the exits with one-sheeters.  I haven’t seen anything that blatant happen in a while but it’s a good example of how eTail developed its vendor-first reputation.  The August eTail conference is very convenient if you are on the East Coast, and I’ve found it attracts a high-level retail attendee.  It is much smaller than the West Coast show.

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