At the same time, an exclusive focus on Direct Response Metrics, coupled with the failure to factor in Search Engine Marketing’s ability to drive awareness and influence can stunt any campaign’s potential.
The key is to properly use the new way of thinking about the buy funnel and to add SEM campaign metrics that reflect the actual reality of how consumers make purchasing decisions.
Kevin writes: “To succeed long term in search, it’s helpful to not only use the new way of thinking about the purchase decision process and a more advanced funnel paradigm, but also to add success metrics to our SEM campaigns that reflect the reality of how consumers buy and make purchase decisions. Even for the best performing sites, the vast majority of visitors don’t convert using your sales or lead-gen metrics and KPIs. This means you need to serve the needs of the early stage researcher and visitor. Since you’ve set yourself up to do that, it makes perfect sense to allocate some branding dollars to the SEM campaigns.”