Search Engine Marketing

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PATIENT: Doc, I’m a longtime catalog marketing pro running a multichannel business. But between the down economy and the expanding Web, I’m depressed and confused about how to get my business back on track. With all of today’s changes, are there any prescriptions you can give me? CATALOG DOCTOR: You’re suffering from a recent affliction called Lost-Boom Syndrome, or LBS. It’s been sweeping multichannel businesses since this economic malaise set in, creating anxiety and despair. LBS exhibits multiple symptoms, requiring a multiple therapy approach. Let’s look at each symptom and its therapy. Symptom 1: Sloppy Marketing The most recent economic boom allowed

A recent whitepaper from the search engine optimization and marketing firm MoreVisibility, 10 Critical Elements to a Successful Google Adwords Campaign, provides tips for multichannel merchants to help them realize the full potential, and profitability, of a properly managed Google Adwords account. Here are five pointers to take away from the report. 1. Keep your campaigns and ad groups tightly themed. Keep your campaigns and ad groups as relevant to your business as possible. Without tightly themed ad groups, you run the risk of Google not being able to determine the context of your groups, the whitepaper cautions. This results in Google misinterpreting

Although we’re in the midst of summer, it’s time to start thinking about your company’s paid search strategy for the upcoming holiday season. Some of the most critical holiday search strategies require months of serious preparation. So take the time to start planning your fourth quarter holiday search now. While there are many holiday search issues to address while the weather’s still warm, it’s best to focus on the following three: 1. quality score; 2. mining last winter’s data for this winter’s search campaign; and 3. e-mail loyalty programs (yes, that’s a search issue, too). Quality Score Search prices skyrocket during the holiday

If your Web site doesn’t rank in search, then it really doesn’t matter how it looks. But once it does rank, how good it looks and converts visitors to buyers is critical to acquiring new customers online.
These days, with constantly rising postage rates and mailing costs, finding new customers online is mandatory. It’s no longer a “nice to have” option. Smart online marketers realize their Web site’s search engine optimization performance is key. They also know it’s not just about how your site looks and performs, but also how your site ranks in Google and other leading search engines. It’s all about potential

You think you’re having a tough time this year? It isn’t easy being the editor of a business publication that’s all about sharing thought-provocative success stories as positive learning experiences, either. As a professionally trained journalist of 26 years, I’d certainly be having a feast this year if I were hunting for “good” dirt on struggling companies to do investigative stories on. How did Lillian Vernon and The Sharper Image both come crashing down? Where did RedEnvelope go wrong? Plenty of carnage out there. But that’s not what we’re all about here at Catalog Success. We strive to help you through good times

When I talk to catalogers these days, I often ask about their online acquisition performance. Inevitably, they respond by telling me about the percentage of their total orders they’re now taking online and how efficient that is. (If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll know that I believe taking orders online, while efficient, has some downsides.) After I listen politely for a moment or two, I probe a little deeper by acknowledging their online order performance and restating my question. “Yes, but how many new customers are you finding online? New customers that weren’t driven there by a catalog mailing or some other offline

Search engine marketing is one of the most important advancements in marketing since television. Millions of people every day are simply typing their wants and needs into that little box and waiting for the good marketers to deliver solutions. The goal of every marketer is to be the one presented on that page saying, “Yes, I do that.” Before we dive into why catalogers should blog for search, here are two facts on Internet search every marketer should know. 1. According to a Pew Internet & American Life Project survey, 91 percent of all Internet users search. Search is tied with e-mail as

When I attend industry conferences, I do quite a lot of cherry-picking. After all, there’s quite a lot of information spread around, but not a lot of it’s relevant to catalogers and multichannel marketers. So for this week’s edition of The Corner View, I took it upon myself to attend many sessions from the eTail Conference, held Feb. 11-14 in Palm Desert, Calif., and whittle down these experiences into the top 10 ideas, tips, points and company activities I took in during the event. I only attended sessions with panels that included catalog/multichannel marketers. The most noteworthy subjects they discussed included exploring

There’s that old Bob Dylan song about times a-changin’ that I won’t bother to quote further. But it seems to hold true moreso year after year, and 2008 is no exception. So while some of us continue to exchange “happy new year” greetings with one another, I’ll send along one last new year’s greeting with what I believe to be the top five actions you should act on, examine or just ponder to bring your catalog/multichannel business in sync with the times. 1. Get your matchback system working smoothly at once. Assign someone in either your marketing or operations departments to do nothing