Now What?
With the discontinuation of Leapfrog, you probably have a few questions, like:
- How does this change Optimized-Marketing’s strategy? (It doesn’t)
- What should Culligan Dealers expect to see? (Lower Adwords costs on branded searches)
- Should we stop buying branded keywords? (No, because your competitors may still be buying them)
- Why is the Optimized-Marketing approach better than LeapFrog? (It’s focused on what works in YOUR market)
- Now what?
Our Strategy:
Our strategy is simple. We take a site, transform it into a marketing research laboratory, learn what’s important to your local market, and make updates according to the data we find.
We base EVERYTHING on ROI which can be measured by cost/contact and conversion rate.
How this will affect YOU:
- Costs – Your costs will decrease for branded keyword searches as there is now less competition.
- Click Through Rates – Click through rates may increase for branded searches as there are less people using ‘Culligan’ in their ads.
- Contacts – Contacts should not be negatively affected, and if anything, they should increase IF you are sending more traffic to an optimized, hyper-local website that is constantly changing to reflect what matters most to your prospects.
- Branded Keywords – Other marketers may says it’s no longer necessary to buy branded keywords because corporate is doing that for you or your SEO will take care of that.
WE say buying branded keywords is necessary and here’s why:
- Corporate is an extra step for a visitor to take to get to you.
- Their site is not currently optimized, specifically for your local visitors.
- Their ads are not currently locally focused.
- Branded keywords searches typically have the best ROI IF you can convert those searchers quickly with an optimized & tested site.
- Costs for branded searches will decrease due to less competition.
- Searchers don’t typically use local modifiers, so they won’t always see a link to your site. For example, they’ll search, “Water Softener”, rather than “Water Softener Durango, CO”. Without the city and state, it becomes a national search.
- Your competitors ARE buying your brand name. Moreover, you can drive up their costs by having a much more relevant ad. In other words, would you rather them have to pay $1 or $10/click for your name?
Others will also say that people searching for Culligan are current customers, or people looking for salt or bottled water delivery. While this may be true, each of these contacts are still a source of revenue to your business.
Are you really willing to risk someone NOT contacting you because they’re sent to a corporate site or to a competitor?
Let’s look at an example with which we can all relate:
Mike’s water softener has been running non-stop, so he puts the system on bypass. He doesn’t have time to figure out where he left Joe Salesman’s business card from six years ago, so he quickly Googles “Culligan”.
If you’re not buying your branded keyword, Mike may see:
So he clicks on Culligan.com, angrily rolls his eyes as he punches in his zip code, sees yet another page, where he has to take ANOTHER step to click on your site (which may or may not be your optimized site if you’re still opted in with a co-op).
By the time Mike is on the phone with you, he’s annoyed. His water softener is broke and he just had to find your site by taking multiple steps that took him waaaay too long. He grudgingly schedules an appointment all the while thinking of how he’s gonna try to get out of paying you.
This is probably the BEST case scenario.
Worst case, Mike says, “Forget it, this stupid water softener was never worth it anyway.”
Now let’s look at Susie, who needs her RO filters changed. She does her search, sees the above list of options and clicks on the first thing she sees, culligan-store.com.
She quickly asks her husband, “Bill, can you change the RO filters if I buy them online”?
In a monotone voice Bill says, “Yes, Dear.” And she never even calls you.
Now that we see how badly this can go, let’s look at what happens with an optimized online presence including buying your branded keyword.
So let’s start over, with an optimized online presence.
Mike searches for “Culligan”, and he sees this:
He finds his local dealership’s information clearly displayed on the optimized Google+ listing on the right and an easy link to the website through the paid advertisement on the left.
He clicks the paid advertisement, calls the local phone number and the sweet gal on the other end of the line says they can get a technician out the next day to evaluate his softener.
The next day, the technician tells him about the new HE Water Softener, and Mike decides to upgrade. That click cost you between $.30 and $1.50 and landed a nice upgrade.
Okay, now how about Susie?
She does her search, clicks on your paid ad, calls the local number and schedules a filter change. That $1.50 click resulted in a filter change with a membrane that brought in $150-$200 in revenue.
Don’t forget that Mike and Susie have friends, and people love to share experiences, especially bad ones. Studies show anywhere from 8 to 26 times more often people will share a negative experience over a positive one and 93% of all “social networking” to find a product or service recommendation is still face-to-face.
This is what really separates us from Leapfrog and any other online marketing company. We know your business, we know the statistics of how people search, and we know that whether a new prospect is calling about a free water test or a 30-year long customer is calling with a simple question, it’s simply good business to make it as easy as possible for folks to find you.
And more times than not, that call will result in revenue for your business.
Well, we’re going to keep on a keepin’ on and do what we do best: constantly test everything to get our clients the best cost/contact, conversion rate, and ROI possible.
Best Regards,
Amanda
P.S. If you have other dealer friends who don’t use Optimized-Marketing but are curious about how to “fill the gap” left by LeapFrog, feel free to pass this page along. The more the entire dealer network understands the better we will all be at planning for the future.