Most Underrated/Overlooked Marketing Channels?
I've been managing online marketing for a mid-size retail business for several years. Up until a year or two ago we had tried everything out there at one point in time or another, you name it: all the mid and top tier PPC engines, various e-mail rental lists, banner ads, online yellow page listings, shopping comparison engines (Pricegrabber, Shopzilla, Shopping.com, Nextag, and Google Shopping), Amazon Marketplace, etc. etc.
We found that only the top-tier PPC and a few of the Shopping comparison engines provided any significant ROI. It seems there are a lot of mid-tier PPC and shopping comparison sites that spring up almost daily. They must rent an e-mail list from an established PPC provider that is desperate to compensate for decreasing revenue, many will give you $100 in free clicks, etc. They always turn out to be a waste of time.
Then you have all these SEO shops that are so confident they can get your site listed high for a variety of keywords in organic results on Google, Yahoo and the such. The funny thing is, when you ask these people (and other people making similar claims) if there is an SLA with a money back guarantee, heck set the bar low like... we are at rank 9 on keyword xxx, if you can't get us to rank 4 or higher, than your service costs us nothing. NOBODY ever agrees to anything like that - such essentially their claims and promises are EMPTY ones. (We do our own SEO so it is funny to debate the merits of their service with them.)
I've seen lots more gimmicks/channels being brought to the table with even large top-tier providers like Google. For instance on Google adwords they have a tab called 'Opportunities' that allows you to review tons of suggested additional keywords and add them to your ad group(s). If you have already done your homework on keyword selection, these opportunities are a joke. Some of them actually seem like good suggestions but all they do is serve the goal to increase Googles Adword revenue with you, not your conversion rate or ROI. I feel sorry for more novice users that just add all these 'opportunity' keywords.
We've also found the Content match is a joke. Maybe certain businesses have success, but as far as retail goes, 95% of the content match ad campaigns we've run on Google, Yahoo, and MSN, have a dismal ROI. Banner ads have always been a joke unless you can get a CPA (cost per acquisition/conversion) pricing model. Otherwise it is usually money wasted.
I've also seen traffic and conversion rates on Yahoo PPC and some of the major shopping comparison engines sink lower and lower over the past 2 years. Google absolutely eclipses Yahoo and MSN (Bing) on PPC traffic and the resulting ROI. In fact we average position 1.5 on all our keywords on MSN (Bing) and for the same keywords we get about 20 times more clicks (and almost proportionally as many sales) with Google and I don't think Google in general gets 20 times the search traffic than Bing. According to ComScore, Google gets about 7-8 times the traffic as Bing. So either Google is ripping us off, or Microsoft is displaying our PPC ads in a much more inferior format (I think it is the latter.) Same with Yahoo, their PPC traffic began to just fall off a cliff starting what, 2 years or so ago?
Shopzilla (formerly Bizrate) seems to have gone to crap. Most all the pricing comparison engines are barely worth using them. And of course the one with the highest traffic and conversion rate is of course the FREE one - Google Shopping (formerly Froogle) - go figure. I'm surprised the other shopping comparison engines are still in business!
There is so many other options including Mobile Ads, Local Listings (similar to Yellow Pages but associated with a major search engine), print ads, radio ads, pay-per-call, and on and on. Who the heck looks at advertising on their mobile phone that translates into a purchase?
I'm doing a reality check. Has anyone else who has had similar experiences found any "diamonds in the rough" recently?
We found that only the top-tier PPC and a few of the Shopping comparison engines provided any significant ROI. It seems there are a lot of mid-tier PPC and shopping comparison sites that spring up almost daily. They must rent an e-mail list from an established PPC provider that is desperate to compensate for decreasing revenue, many will give you $100 in free clicks, etc. They always turn out to be a waste of time.
Then you have all these SEO shops that are so confident they can get your site listed high for a variety of keywords in organic results on Google, Yahoo and the such. The funny thing is, when you ask these people (and other people making similar claims) if there is an SLA with a money back guarantee, heck set the bar low like... we are at rank 9 on keyword xxx, if you can't get us to rank 4 or higher, than your service costs us nothing. NOBODY ever agrees to anything like that - such essentially their claims and promises are EMPTY ones. (We do our own SEO so it is funny to debate the merits of their service with them.)
I've seen lots more gimmicks/channels being brought to the table with even large top-tier providers like Google. For instance on Google adwords they have a tab called 'Opportunities' that allows you to review tons of suggested additional keywords and add them to your ad group(s). If you have already done your homework on keyword selection, these opportunities are a joke. Some of them actually seem like good suggestions but all they do is serve the goal to increase Googles Adword revenue with you, not your conversion rate or ROI. I feel sorry for more novice users that just add all these 'opportunity' keywords.
We've also found the Content match is a joke. Maybe certain businesses have success, but as far as retail goes, 95% of the content match ad campaigns we've run on Google, Yahoo, and MSN, have a dismal ROI. Banner ads have always been a joke unless you can get a CPA (cost per acquisition/conversion) pricing model. Otherwise it is usually money wasted.
I've also seen traffic and conversion rates on Yahoo PPC and some of the major shopping comparison engines sink lower and lower over the past 2 years. Google absolutely eclipses Yahoo and MSN (Bing) on PPC traffic and the resulting ROI. In fact we average position 1.5 on all our keywords on MSN (Bing) and for the same keywords we get about 20 times more clicks (and almost proportionally as many sales) with Google and I don't think Google in general gets 20 times the search traffic than Bing. According to ComScore, Google gets about 7-8 times the traffic as Bing. So either Google is ripping us off, or Microsoft is displaying our PPC ads in a much more inferior format (I think it is the latter.) Same with Yahoo, their PPC traffic began to just fall off a cliff starting what, 2 years or so ago?
Shopzilla (formerly Bizrate) seems to have gone to crap. Most all the pricing comparison engines are barely worth using them. And of course the one with the highest traffic and conversion rate is of course the FREE one - Google Shopping (formerly Froogle) - go figure. I'm surprised the other shopping comparison engines are still in business!
There is so many other options including Mobile Ads, Local Listings (similar to Yellow Pages but associated with a major search engine), print ads, radio ads, pay-per-call, and on and on. Who the heck looks at advertising on their mobile phone that translates into a purchase?
I'm doing a reality check. Has anyone else who has had similar experiences found any "diamonds in the rough" recently?
"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. -- Mark Twain