Search Advertising Introduction

Search advertising, also called pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, is a way to advertise your business or product directly on search engine results pages, where the advertiser pays only for each click on their advert.

Search advertising continues to evolve, and formats available range from simple text adverts through to rich media banners and even video adverts. PPC advertising revolutionised the online advertising industry, and today, search advertising generates 95% of Google’s revenue (Peterson, 2013).

Adverts on search engines are easy to spot – they’re clearly labelled as advertising and are separated from organic search results. They can appear on the top of the results page, usually in a box, and also on the right hand side of the results page.

Search advertising on search engines is keyword based – this means that it is triggered by the search term that a user enters into a search engine. Advertisers target the keywords for which they want to appear.

For the advertiser, the beauty of search advertising is that adverts are displayed when potential customers are already expressing intent – they are searching for a product or service. It allows advertisers to present their offering to a potential customer who is already in the buying cycle.

Google is, by a wide margin, the leader in the search advertising field; because of this, the chapter is very Google-centric, though the same principle should apply to any other search advertising platforms. Other platforms to be aware of are Bing,

Yahoo and Baidu.

•  How to put together a search advert
•  How to target your search ad at relevant users
•  The process of bidding on key phrases and how this affects your ranking
•  How to plan, set up and run your own search advertising campaign

What not to do

Black hat SEO refers to practices that attempt to game the search engines. If a search engine uncovers a website using unethical practices to achieve search engine rankings, it is likely to remove that website from its index.

Google publishes guidelines for webmasters, available through Google’s Webmaster Central (www.google.com/webmasters). As well as outlining best practice principles, Google has supplied the following list of don’ts:

•  Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
•  Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
•  Don’t send automated queries to Google.
•  Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
•  Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicated content.
•  Don’t create pages that include malicious behaviours such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other malware.
•  Avoid ‘doorway’ pages created just for search engines or other ‘cookie cutter’ approaches, such as affiliate programmes with little or no original content. If your site participates in an affiliate programme, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.
•  Avoid link farms and focus on attracting quality, valuable links.

The bottom line: design websites for users first and foremost, and don’t try to trick the search engines. It will only be a matter of time before they uncover the black hat techniques.

Local search

Local search refers to search behaviour and results where location matters. Either results returned are local in nature, or results returned can be map based.

With blended SERPs, map-based results can be returned together with other types of results, depending on the type of search. As search engines become ever more sophisticated, location can be inferred and influence the type of results.

For example, a user may search for ‘plumber london’, and the search will know to return results for London plumbers. These may even be returned on a map. However, a user in London may search just for ‘plumber’. The search can infer from the user’s IP address that the user is in London, and still return results for London plumbers (since someone searching for this term is likely to be looking for
a nearby service).

For search engines to return location-relevant results, they need to know the location of things being searched for. This is often determined from sites that include the name and address of a business. Note that this site may not be yours. Location results are often determined from various review sites, and the results can include some of those reviews.

Search engines also allow businesses to ‘claim’ their locations. A business can verify itself through a process with the search engine, and ensure that location information is correct. Google+ Local is a good example of this – the business can claim a listing, add their details, and even receive reviews.

Mobile search

As web-enabled mobile devices continue to grow in the market, and become easier to use, mobile search remains a key growth area. Mobile searches tend to be different from desktop searches. They are more navigational in nature (users tend to know where they want to end up), and users are often looking for concise, actionable answers.

Mobile search input can also be different from desktop search. As well as typing in search keywords, mobile users can search by voice, or by using images or scanning barcodes.

As with mobile web development, mobile SEO is a little different from desktop SEO, although the fundamental principles remain the same. Build usable and accessible sites with great content, and you’ve already come a long way.

Where there are differences in approach for mobile SEO, these are largely because:

•  Search engines have the ability to deliver precise location-based results to mobile users.
•  Usability is critical in sites for mobile devices.
•  Search engines have less data to work with (compared to traditional web) in terms of site history, traffic, and inbound links.

The fundamentals of mobile SEO are not so different to those of desktop SEO.

1. A usable, crawlable site is very important.

Build mobile versions of your website that cater for mobile users: simple navigation and content stripped down to only what is required.

2. Content is important, and should be formatted for mobile usage.

Text and images should be optimised for the mobile experience – so no large file sizes! The meta data still matters: titles and descriptions are what users see in the SERPs.

3. Links are important.

You should link to your mobile site from your desktop site and vice versa. Submit your mobile site to relevant mobile directories.

4. Submit a mobile XML sitemap.

Mobile-specific sitemaps use the same protocols as standard XML sitemaps, with the addition of a mobile tag.

5. Use the word ‘mobile’ on the mobile website, or use mobile top-level domains.

Make it explicit to search engines that this is the mobile version of your website, and they are more likely to prioritise it as such.

Social and search

Social information is playing an ever-increasing role in search. Social content, such as Twitter messages or YouTube videos, can appear in the SERPs, and there is a growing indication of social influence on search rankings.

There are several social factors to consider when it comes to social and search.

1. Use social media properties to dominate brand SERPs.

When someone searches for your brand name, you can use your social media properties to ‘own’ more of the results on that page, reducing the likelihood that a user will end up on a competitor’s website instead. Use your brand name when naming Twitter and Flickr profiles, and Facebook and YouTube pages.

2. Social links are used as signals of relevance.

Links from social sites such as Twitter include “rel=nofollow”. However, there is a strong indication that these links are in fact followed by search engines, and are used to determine relevance. If you focus on creating great content on your site and making sure that it is easy to share socially, you should see a result in your SEO efforts.

3. Personalised results are influenced by your online social network.

If you are logged in to a social network while searching (Facebook for Bing, or your Gmail account for Google), you could see results from or influenced by your social circle. In Bing, for instance, results can include indications of what your friends have previously liked or shared via Facebook. On Google, you may be more likely to see your friend’s blog for relevant searches.

4. Optimise for social search engines.

While Google is the biggest search engine worldwide, YouTube is the second biggest. Even within social properties, users still use search to find the content they are looking for. Content that is housed on these properties should be optimised for the relevant social search engine as well.

User insights

Search engines want their results to be highly relevant to web users, to make sure that web users keep returning to the search engine for future searches. And the best way to establish what is relevant to users? By looking at how they use websites, of course!

User data is the most effective way of judging the true relevance and value of a website. For example, if users arrive on a website and leave immediately, chances are it wasn’t relevant to their query in the first place. However, if a user repeatedly visits a website and spends a long time there, it is probably extremely relevant. When it comes to search engines, relevant, valuable sites are promoted, and
irrelevant sites are demoted.

How do search engines access this data?

Search engines use cookies to maintain a history of a user’s search activity. This will include keywords used, and websites visited from the search engine. Search engines gather data on the clickthrough rate of results, and on bounce rates.Site speed, that is, the performance of your website, is a contributing factor to ranking in Google. Google confirmed in April 2010 at this was one of over 200 ranking signals (Singhal, 2010).

So, what does this mean for SEO? When it comes to a website, it must:

•  Be valuable enough to attract both visitors and links naturally
•  Retain visitors and make sure they return to the website
•  Convert visitors

Competitor analysis

You can find out who is linking to your competitors, and which non-competing sites are ranking highly for your key phrases. Use this information to identify sites to target for link requests.

Using Google search, the following search operators can be used to find these links and websites:

•  Link:url.com
•  Link:http://www.url.com/page.html
•  Link:url.com –site:url.com

With all link-building tactics, make sure that you use your key phrases when communicating. You will be telling people how to link to you, and ensuring that search engines notice your authority.

How does a website get more links?

With links playing such a vital role in search engine rankings and traffic for a website, everyone wants more of them. There are certainly dubious means of generating links, most of which can actually result in being penalised by the search engines. However, here are some ways for ethical and honest website owners and marketers (and that’s what you are) to go about increasing links to their websites.

Create excellent, valuable content that others want to read

If people find your site useful, they are more likely to link to it. It is not necessary (or possible) to try to write content that will appeal to the whole of the Internet population. Focus on being the best in the industry you are in, and in providing value to the members of that community. Make sure that valuable content is themed around your key phrases.

Infographics are visual and graphic representations of data, and are a popular type of content that is useful to users, and can encourage lots of traffic and inbound links.

Create tools and documents that others want to use

Interview experts in your field, and host those interviews on your website. Create useful PDF guides for your industry that people can download from your site. Think outside the box for quirky, relevant items that people will link to. Calculators are popular tools, and we don’t just mean the ones that add two and two together. If you have a website selling diet books, for example, create a tool which helps users to calculate their body mass index (BMI) and target weight. Importantly, be unique!

Create games

Creating a game that people want to play is a great way to generate links. Make sure that the theme of the game is based on the key phrases for your website, so that when others talk about and link to the game, they are using your key phrases.

Capitalise on software and widgets

Widgets, browser extensions and other software that users love to use all help to generate links for a website. Quirk has released a Mozilla Firefox extension called SearchStatus that is exceptionally useful to the SEO community. Each time someone mentions this SEO tool, they link to Quirk. People also like to include fun widgets in their forum signatures – create a widget, make sure that the link is
included, and let people spread these around the web for you.

Not all links are created equal

Of course, not all links are equal. While link volume is the number of links coming to a specific page of your site, link authority looks at the value of the links. Some sites are more trusted than others. So, if they are more trusted, then links from those sites are worth more. Likewise, some sites are more relevant than others to specific terms. The more relevant a site, the more value is transferred by the link. Well-known and established news sites, government sites (.gov) and university domains (.ac) are examples of sites from which links can carry more weighting. Links form websites that have a higher PageRank also carry more link weight.

Search algorithms also consider relationships between linked sites. By analysing various things, the search engines try to determine if the links are natural links, or if they are manipulative, artificial links created solely for ranking purposes. Manipulated links are worth very little compared to natural links and may even lead to a drop in search engine rankings.

The search engine algorithm will also determine the relevancy of the referring website to the site being linked to. The more relevant the sites are to each other, the better.

Also consider that linking to valuable, relevant external resources can help to improve the visibility of your own site.

The parts of a link

Here is the HTML code for a link:

<a href=“http://www.targeturl.com/targetpage.htm”>Anchor Text</a>

•  <a href> and </a> are HTML tags that show where the link starts and ends.
•  http://www.targeturl.com/targetpage.htm is the page that the link leads to. You should make sure that you are linking to a relevant page in your site, and not just to the home page.
•  Anchor Text is the visible text that forms the link. This is the text that should contain the key phrase you are targeting.

The link sends a signal that the target URL is important for the subject used in the anchor text.

There is a lot more information that can be included in this anatomy, such as instructions telling the search engine not to follow the link, or instructions to the browser on whether the link should open in a new window or not.

<a href=“http://www.targeturl.com/targetpage.htm” rel=“nofollow”>Anchor Text</a>

•  rel=“nofollow” can be included in links when you don’t want to vouch for the target URL. Search engines do not count nofollow links for ranking purposes. This was introduced by Google to try to combat comment spam.

Link popularity

Links are a vital part of how the Internet works. The purpose of a link is to allow a user to go from one web page to another. Search engines, doing their best to mimic the behaviour of humans, also follow links.

Besides allowing search engine spiders to find websites, links are a way of validating relevance and indicating importance. When one page links to another, it is as if that page is voting or vouching for the destination page. Generally, the more votes a website receives, the more trusted it becomes, the more important it is deemed, and the better it will rank on search engines.

Links help send signals of trust.Signals of trust can come only from a third-party source. Few people will trust someone who says, “Don’t worry, you can trust me!” unless someone else, who is already trusted, says, “Don’t worry, I know him well. You can trust him.” It is the same with links and search engines. Trusted sites can transfer trust to unknown sites via links.

Links help to validate relevance. Text links, by their very nature, contain text (thank you, Captain Obvious). The text that makes up the link can help validate relevance. A link such as ‘Cape Town hotel’ sends the message that, “You can trust that the destination site is relevant to the term ‘Cape Town hotel’.” If the destination web page has already used content to send a signal of relevance, the
link simply validates that signal.

Optimising media

Images, video and other digital assets should also be optimised with the relevant keywords. Search engines cannot decipher multimedia content as well as text, so they rely on the way that media is described to determine what it is about. Screen readers also read out these descriptions, which can help visually impaired users make sense of a website. In addition, media such as images and video are often also shown on the SERPs. Proper optimisation can give a brand more ownership of the SERP real estate, and can also be used effectively to target competitive terms.

Just as rich media can help emphasise the content on a page to a visitor, they can also help search engines to rank pages, provided they are labelled correctly.

Here are some ways to optimise images with key phrases for SEO:

•  Use descriptive, keyword-filled filenames.
•  Use specific alt tags and title attributes.
•  Add meta information to the image. Make sure this information is relevant.
•  Use descriptive captions, and keep relevant copy close to the corresponding media. For example, an image caption and neighbouring text will help to describe content of the image.
•  Make sure that the header tags and images are relevant to each other.Also think about what other digital assets you have, and whether these can be optimised in line with your key phrase strategy. For example, consider app store optimisation (ASO) – the process of optimising your mobile and web apps for the specific web stores they are distributed in.

Here are some ways in which you can optimise your apps:

•  Give your app a catchy name that also includes your most important keyword or phrase.
•  Include a distinctive, recognisable and clear icon.
•  Spell out the features and benefits clearly, including key phrases where possible.
•  In your app store listing, add links to your major social media platforms and your website – and don’t forget to link the other way too!
•  Include as much meta data as you can, including tags, categories and descriptions (this will depend on the app store in question) (Bulygin, 2013).

The best way to ensure results is to focus on writing quality content while sticking to a few guidelines on tags and URLs. Remember, you want search engines to rank you highly for your content, but you also want to ensure that the content is a pleasure to read.

Regularly adding fresh, valuable content will also encourage the search engines to crawl your site more frequently.

Use your website and its pages to establish and reinforce themes. Information can always be arranged in some kind of hierarchical structure. Just as a single page can have a heading and then get broken down into sub-headings, a large website can have main themes that get broken down into sub-themes. Search engines will see these themes and recognise your website as one with rich content.

The best way to ensure results is to focus on writing quality content while sticking to a few guidelines on tags and URLs. Remember, you want search engines to rank you highly for your content, but you also want to ensure that the content is a pleasure to read.

Regularly adding fresh, valuable content will also encourage the search engines to crawl your site more frequently.

Use your website and its pages to establish and reinforce themes. Information can always be arranged in some kind of hierarchical structure. Just as a single page can have a heading and then get broken down into sub-headings, a large website can have main themes that get broken down into sub-themes. Search engines will see these themes and recognise your website as one with rich content.

Optimising content for key phrases

Once keywords and phrases are selected, we need to ensure the site contains content to target them. You must ensure that the content is properly structured and that it sends signals of relevance. Content is the most important part of your website: create relevant, targeted content aimed at your selected key phrases.

As you know from the content strategy chapter, content already has several roles to play on your site:

•  It must provide information to visitors.
•  It must engage with them.
•  It must persuade them to do what you want.

Now it must also send signals of relevance to search engines. You need to use the keywords on the content page in a way that search engines will pick up, and users will understand.

Each web page should be optimised for two to three key phrases: the primary key phrase, the secondary and the tertiary. A page can be optimised for up to five key phrases, but it is better to have more niche pages than fewer unfocused pages.

Here are some guidelines:

1.  Title tag:use the key phrase in the title and as close to the beginning as possible.
2.  H1 header tag:use the key phrase in the header tag, and as much as possible in the other H tags.
3.  Body content: use the key phrase at least three times, more if there is a lot of content and it makes sense to. You should aim for about 350 words of content. But don’t overdo it! That could look like spam to the search engines.
4.  Bold: use <strong> tags around the keyword at least once.
5.  URL:try to use the key phrase in your page URL.
6.  Meta description:use it at least once in the meta description of the page, which should entice users to clickthrough to your site from the SERP.
7.  Link anchor text: try to ensure that the keyword is used in the anchor text of the pages linking to you.
8.  Domain name:if possible, use the key phrase in your domain name.

Step-by-step key phrase research

Step 1: Brainstorm

Think about the words you would use to describe your business, and about the questions or needs of your customers that it fulfils. How would someone ask for what you are offering? Consider synonyms and misspellings as well.

Bear in mind that people may not ask for your services in the same way as you describe them. You may sell ‘herbal infusions’, whereas most people would ask for ‘herbal teas’, and some might even request a ‘tisane’.

Even common words are often misspelt, and you may need to consider common misspellings – for example, ‘jewelry’ or ‘morgage’.

Step 2: Gather data

Two ways in which to gather accurate key phrase data are to survey customers and to look at your website referral logs.

Look to see what terms customers are already using to find you, and add those to your list. If they are already sending you some traffic, it is worth seeing if you can increase that traffic.

Step 3: Use keyword research tools

There are several tools available for keyword discovery, and some of them are free. Some tools will scan your website and suggest keywords based on your current content. Most will let you enter keywords, and will then return suggestions based on past research data, along with:

•  Similar keywords
•  Common keywords used with that keyword
•  Common misspellings
•  Frequency of the keywords in search queries
•  Industry-related keywords
•  Keywords that are sending traffic to your competitors
•  How many sites are targeting your keywords

See Tools of the Trade for some tools that you can use.

Bearing in mind the factors that make a good keyword, you need to aim for the right mix of keywords. Low-volume terms with low levels of competition may be a good way to get traffic in the short term, but don’t be scared off by bigger competition in the high-value, high-volume areas. It may take longer to get there, but once you do, the revenue can make it all worthwhile.

It is a good idea to create a spreadsheet of the list of keywords, along with additional information about each one.

Keyword or phrase	Search volume	Competition	Propensity to Convert	Value of Lead
Hotel	3,870	90%	2%	$18
Luxury hotels	345	80%	35%	$35

                        Figure 4.Keep a spreadsheet of targeted keywords for reference.

This will help you to choose the right keywords to target. These lists should be created for the whole website, and can then be broken down for each page you want to optimise.

SEO and key phrases

How do you start building your key phrase list? It requires a little thought and a fair amount of research and insight, using tools that are readily available to help you grow and refine your list of keywords.

Key phrases are the very foundation of search. When a user enters a query on a search engine, he or she uses the words he or she thinks are relevant to the search. The search engine then returns those pages it believes are most relevant to the words the searcher used – and, increasingly, the implied meaning of the search.

Search engines have built a sophisticated understanding of semantics and the way in which we use language. So, if a user searches for ‘car rental’, the search engine will look for pages that are relevant to ‘car rental’ as well as, possibly, ‘car hire’, ‘vehicle hire’, and so forth. Search engines have also built up knowledge around common misspellings, synonyms and related searches.

 Because of this, it is crucial that you implement keywords that are likely to be used by their target audience. Websites need to appear when their potential customers are searching for them. A large part of keyword research is understanding search psychology. When we build our key phrase lists, we are tapping into the mental process of searchers and putting together the right mix of keywords to target.
There are four things to consider when choosing a keyword:

Search volume

How many searchers are using that phrase to find what they want? For example, there is an estimated monthly search volume of over 338 million for the keyword ‘hotel’, but an estimated 6 600 searches per month for a key phrase such as ‘Cape Town Waterfront hotel’.

Competition
How many other websites out there are targeting that same phrase? For example, Google finds over 2 800 000 000 results for ‘hotel’, but only 3 210 000 for ‘Cape Town Waterfront Hotel’.

Propensity to convert

What is the likelihood that the searcher using that key phrase is going to convert on your site? A conversion is a desired action taken by the visitor to your website.

Related to propensity to convert is the relevance of the selected term to what you are offering. If you are selling rooms at a hotel at the V&A Waterfront, which of the two terms (‘hotel’ or ‘Cape Town Waterfront hotel’) do you think will lead to a higher rate of conversions?

Value per lead

What is the average value per prospect attracted by the keyword? Depending on the nature of your website, the average value per lead varies. Using the hotel example again, consider these two terms:

‘luxury Cape Town hotel’ and ‘budget Cape Town hotel’

Both are terms used by someone wanting to book a hotel in Cape Town, but it is likely that someone looking for a luxury hotel is intending to spend more. That means that that particular lead has a higher value, particularly if you have a hotel-booking website that offers a range of accommodation.

Search engine friendly website structure

Search engines encounter two kinds of obstacles:

•  Technical challenges that prevent the search engine spider from accessing content.
•  A competitive marketing environment where everyone wants to rank highly.

To ensure that search engines can access your content, you must remove technical barriers. Those who want to achieve the best results must follow best practices. These best practices are outlined in the chapter on Web Development and Design.

The key is to make sure that there are direct HTML links to each page you want the search engines to index. The most important pages should be accessible directly from the home page of your website.

The information architecture, or how content is planned and laid out, has important usability and SEO implications. Users want to find what they are looking for quickly and easily, while website owners want search engine spiders to be able to access and index all applicable pages. In fact, Google has released an update that penalises sites with poor user experience (such as no content above the fold,
or a high bounce rate) (Cutts, 2012).

There are times when user experience and SEO can be at odds with each other, but usually if you focus on building usable, accessible websites, you have made them search engine friendly as well.

Another technical challenge to search engines is Flash. For the most part, search engines struggle to crawl and index Flash sites. There are some workarounds, but the best approach from an SEO perspective is to avoid building sites or delivering key content in Flash. Instead, use HTML5, which provides similar interactivity and visuals while remaining easily crawlable.

Understanding SEO

Search engines need to help users find what they’re looking for. To make sure they list the best results first, they look for signals of:

•  Popularity
•  Authority
•  Relevance
•  Trust
•  Importance

SEO, also called organic or natural optimisation, involves optimising websites to achieve high rankings on search engines for certain selected key phrases. Generally, techniques used for optimising on one search engine will also help efforts across others.

How search engines work, according to Google:

“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links, a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘important’ weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important’.”

SEO can be divided into two main strategies:

1.  On-page optimisation is achieved by making changes to the HTML code, content and structure of a website, making it more accessible for search engines, and by extension, easier for users to find.
2.  Off-page optimisationis generally focused on building links to the website, and covers activities like social media and digital PR. SEO is an extremely effective way of generating new business to a site. It is a continuous process and a way of thinking about how search engines see your website, and how users use search engines to find your website. It’s search psychology.

Search engine optimisation is a fairly technical practice but it can easily be broken down into five main areas:
•  A search engine friendly website structure
•  A well-researched list of key phrases
•  Content optimised to target those key phrases
•  Link popularity
•  User insights

SEO and key phrases

How do you start building your key phrase list? It requires a little thought and a fair amount of research and insight, using tools that are readily available to help you grow and refine your list of keywords.

Key phrases are the very foundation of search. When a user enters a query on a search engine, he or she uses the words he or she thinks are relevant to the search. The search engine then returns those pages it believes are most relevant to the words the searcher used – and, increasingly, the implied meaning of the search.

Search engines have built a sophisticated understanding of semantics and the way in which we use language. So, if a user searches for ‘car rental’, the search engine will look for pages that are relevant to ‘car rental’ as well as, possibly, ‘car hire’, ‘vehicle hire’, and so forth. Search engines have also built up knowledge around common misspellings, synonyms and related searches.

Because of this, it is crucial that you implement keywords that are likely to be used by their target audience. Websites need to appear when their potential customers are searching for them. A large part of keyword research is understanding search psychology. When we build our key phrase lists, we are tapping into the mental process of searchers and putting together the right mix of keywords to target.

There are four things to consider when choosing a keyword:

Search volume

How many searchers are using that phrase to find what they want? For example, there is an estimated monthly search volume of over 338 million for the keyword ‘hotel’, but an estimated 6 600 searches per month for a key phrase such as ‘Cape Town Waterfront hotel’.

Competition

How many other websites out there are targeting that same phrase? For example, Google finds over 2 800 000 000 results for ‘hotel’, but only 3 210 000 for ‘Cape Town Waterfront Hotel’.

Propensity to convert

What is the likelihood that the searcher using that key phrase is going to convert on your site? A conversion is a desired action taken by the visitor to your website. Related to propensity to convert is the relevance of the selected term to what you are offering. If you are selling rooms at a hotel at the V&A Waterfront, which of the two terms (‘hotel’ or ‘Cape Town Waterfront hotel’) do you think will lead to a higher rate of conversions?

Value per lead

What is the average value per prospect attracted by the keyword? Depending on the nature of your website, the average value per lead varies. Using the hotel example again, consider these two terms:
‘luxury Cape Town hotel’ and ‘budget Cape Town hotel’ Both are terms used by someone wanting to book a hotel in Cape Town, but it is likely that someone looking for a luxury hotel is intending to spend more. That means that that particular lead has a higher value, particularly if you have a hotel-
booking website that offers a range of accommodation.

Search engine friendly website structure

Search engines encounter two kinds of obstacles:

•  Technical challenges that prevent the search engine spider from accessing content.
•  A competitive marketing environment where everyone wants to rank highly.

To ensure that search engines can access your content, you must remove technical barriers. Those who want to achieve the best results must follow best practices. These best practices are outlined in the on Web Development and Design.

The key is to make sure that there are direct HTML links to each page you want the search engines to index. The most important pages should be accessible directly from the home page of your website.

The information architecture, or how content is planned and laid out, has important usability and SEO implications. Users want to find what they are looking for quickly and easily, while website owners want search engine spiders to be able to access and index all applicable pages. In fact, Google has released an update that penalises sites with poor user experience (such as no content above the fold,
or a high bounce rate) (Cutts, 2012).

There are times when user experience and SEO can be at odds with each other, but usually if you focus on building usable, accessible websites, you have made them search engine friendly as well.

Another technical challenge to search engines is Flash. For the most part, search engines struggle to crawl and index Flash sites. There are some workarounds, but the best approach from an SEO perspective is to avoid building sites or delivering key content in Flash. Instead, use HTML5, which provides similar interactivity and visuals while remaining easily crawlable.

The  on web development and design delves more deeply into building a search engine friendly website.

Understanding SEO

Search engines need to help users find what they’re looking for. To make sure they list the best results first, they look for signals of:

•  Popularity
•  Authority
•  Relevance
•  Trust
•  Importance

SEO, also called organic or natural optimisation, involves optimising websites to achieve high rankings on search engines for certain selected key phrases.

Generally, techniques used for optimising on one search engine will also help efforts across others.

How search engines work, according to Google:

“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links, a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘important’ weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important’.”


SEO can be divided into two main strategies:

1.  On-page optimisation is achieved by making changes to the HTML code, content and structure of a website, making it more accessible for search engines, and by extension, easier for users to find.
2.  Off-page optimisationis generally focused on building links to the website, and covers activities like social media and digital PR.

SEO is an extremely effective way of generating new business to a site. It is a continuous process and a way of thinking about how search engines see your website, and how users use search engines to find your website. It’s search psychology.

Search engine optimisation is a fairly technical practice but it can easily be broken down into five main areas:

•  A search engine friendly website structure
•  A well-researched list of key phrases
•  Content optimised to target those key phrases
•  Link popularity
•  User insights

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Key terms and concepts

Term	Definition
Alt text	The ‘alt’ attribute for the IMG HTML tag. It is used in HTML to attribute a text field to an image on a web page, normally with a descriptive function, telling a search engine or user what an image is about and displaying the text in instances where the image is unable to load. Also called Alt Tag.
Anchor text	The visible, clickable text in a link.
App store optimisation (ASO)	The process of optimising mobile and web applications for the specific web stores in which they are distributed.
Backlink	All the links on other pages that will take the user to a specific web page. Each link to that specific page is known as an inbound/backlink. The number of backlinks influences your ranking, so the more backlinks the better – get linking!
Canonical	The canonical version is the definitive version. In SEO, it refers to a definitive URL.
Domain name	The easy-to-read name used to identify an IP address of a server that distinguishes it from other systems on the World Wide Web: our domain name is quirk.biz.
Flash	A technology used to show video and animation on a website. It can be bandwidth heavy and unfriendly to search engine spiders.
Heading tags	Heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) are standard elements used to define headings and subheadings on a web page. The number indicates the importance, so H1 tags are viewed by the spiders as being more important than H3 tags. Using target key phrases in your H tags is essential for effective SEO.
Home page	The first page of any website. The home page gives users a glimpse into what your site is about – very much like the index in a book, or a magazine.
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)	Certain HTML tags are used to structure the information and features within a web page.
Hyperlink	A link in an electronic document that allows you, once you click on it, to follow the link to the relevant web page.
Internet Protocol (IP) address	The Internet Protocol (IP) address is an exclusive number that is used to represent every single computer in a network.
Keyword frequency	The number of times a keyword or key phrase appears on a website.
Key phrase	Two or more words that are combined to form a search query - often referred to as keywords. It is usually better to optimise for a phrase rather than a single word.
Keyword rankings	Where the keywords or phrases targeted by SEO rank in the search engine results – if your targeted terms do not appear on the first three pages, start worrying.
Landing page	The page a user reaches when clicking on a paid or organic search engine listing. The pages that have the most success are those that match up as closely as possible with the user’s search query.
Link	A URL embedded on a web page. If you click on the link you will be taken to that page.
Link bait	A technique for creating content that is specifically designed to attract links from other web pages.
Meta tags	Tags that tell search engine spiders what exactly a web page is about. It’s important that your meta tags are optimised for the targeted key phrases. Meta tags are made up of meta titles, descriptions and keywords.
PageRank	Google’s secret algorithm for ranking web pages in search engine results pages.
Referrer	When a user clicks on a link from one site to another, the site the user has left is the referrer. Most browsers log the referrer’s URL in referrer strings. This information is vital in determining which queries are being used to find specific sites.
Robots.txt	A file written and stored in the root directory of a website that restricts the search engine spiders from indexing certain pages of the website.
Search engine spiders	Programs that travel the web, following links and building up the indexes of search engines.
Universal Resource Locator (URL)	A web address that is unique to every page on the Internet.
Usability	A measure of how easy it is for a user to complete a desired task. Sites with excellent usability fare far better than those that are difficult to use.
XML sitemap	A guide that search engines use to help them index a website, which indicates how many pages there are, how often they are updated and how important they are.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Introduction

With millions of people performing billions of searches each day to find content on the Internet (Sullivan, 2013), it makes sense that marketers want their products to be findable online. Search engines, the channels through which these searches happen, use closely guarded algorithms to determine the results displayed.

Determining what factors these algorithms take into account has led to a growing practice known as search engine optimisation.Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the practice of optimising a website to achieve the highest possible ranking on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Someone who practices SEO professionally is also known as an SEO (search engine optimiser).

Google says it uses more than 200 different factors in its algorithm to determine relevance and ranking (Avellanosa, 2012). None of the major search engines disclose the elements they use to rank pages, but there are many SEO practitioners who spend time analysing patent applications to try to determine what these are.

SEO can be split into two distinct camps: white hat SEO and black hat SEO (with, of course, some grey hat wearers in between). Black hat SEO refers to trying to game the search engines. These SEOs use dubious means to achieve high rankings, and their websites are occasionally blacklisted by the search engines. White hat SEO, on the other hand, refers to working within the parameters set by search engines to optimise a website for better user experience. Search engines want to send users to the website that is best suited to their needs, so white hat SEO should ensure that users can find what they are looking for.

•  How search engines work and how they deliver results
•  How to plan, research and implement an effective keyword strategy across text and other content
•  Techniques for link building, an essential aspect of SEO
•  How specialised search – such as mobile, social and local search – can affect your rankings, and how to optimise for these

Tools of the trade

Collaborative CRM tools

Collaborative CRM refers to a process that combines customer data across all facets of a company. For example, queries regularly submitted to the technical support or customer service arm of a business can be used to inform product development and website content. Instead of various departments collecting their own customer data and using this in isolation, data is collated so that all channels make informed decisions based on the holistic customer experience. MindTouch (www.mindtouch.com) is an example of a CRM product that offers collaborative authoring. This means that multiple users can simultaneously edit shared documents while maintaining an audit trail and version control.

Social CRM tools

Social CRM tools perform a number of functions, from standardising the collection of data from social media channels to automatically posting links and accepting friend requests. These tools can also be used to identify customer sentiment within social media channels. BrandsEye (www.brandseye.com), Radian6 (www.radian6.com) and Simplify360 (www.simplify360.com) are examples of social CRM listening tools that collect data on brand mentions across social media channels online, in real time.

Operational CRM tools

Operational CRM tools  deal with the most obvious channels that relate to customers: the front end of a business and its customer service. From a web technology point of view, operational CRM informs the website a customer sees as well as their entire online user experience.

Two examples of operational CRM tools are OnContact (www.oncontact.com) and Zoho CRM (www.zoho.com/crm).

Sales and marketing automation CRM tools

Sales force automation uses CRM software to manage sales cycles and to collect customer sales data. The software enables businesses to track leads, schedule transactions and communications with potential and existing customers, and generate detailed reporting on the sales process.

Marketing automation tools identify current customers and use their response information to manage email marketing lists. The tools can also identify prospects, as well as unhappy customers.

HubSpot (www.hubspot.com) offers a marketing automation tool that allows companies to generate and send behaviour-driven emails.

Analytical CRM tools

Analytical CRM tools allow companies to record,save and investigate customer datato better understand customers through their behaviour. For instance, data collected about the nature of visits to your website can be used to make informed decisions about where to focus attention based on customer behaviour. Past purchasing behaviour of customers can be analysed to predict future purchasing behaviour. Data can be used to segment customers and tailor communications.

These tools can help target marketing campaigns at customers and predict future sales and customer spending.

KXEN (www.kxen.com) is a popular analytical CRM tool with the ability to forecast customer behaviour and shed light on customer preferences and spending power. It also allows you to tailor marketing campaigns to specific customers, segmented by various demographics. 

Step-by-step guide to implementing a CRM strategy

Step 1 – Conduct a business needs analysis

A major part of determining where to begin with a CRM implementation is having a clear understanding of the business needs, and where CRM would most benefit the organisation. CRM touches on sales, marketing, customer service and support both online and offline. It’s important to review the needs of each business area so that you can determine your strategy for CRM.

Ideally you should have individual goals for each department – and all members within the organisation should buy in to the strategy in order to drive it successfully, from the highest rank to the lowest. Implementing successful CRM across the organisation is a process, with stakeholders making decisions collectively and sharing their views and needs. Decisions should be based on realistic budgets and resources and full calculations carried out before any kind of loyalty currency is
decided upon.

Step 2 – Understand customer needs

CRM is about the customer. You might have identified a range of business needs, but what about the needs of the customer?

Two elements of CRM in particular – service delivery and customer support– are actually all about meeting the needs of the customer. And what’s the best way of determining customer needs? By asking them, of course. There are various ways to find out what customers want, but in all of them, it is important to listen. Use online monitoring tools and insights from social mediato gather a more rounded view of what your customers think, feel and want. Look at past behaviour, churn rates, successes – a detailed data mining exercise could also be on the cards, as you will need to understand which of your customers is the most valuable and why.

Step 3 – Set objectives and measurements of success

CRM is a long-term commitment and you need to consider a long-term approach.

Depending on the business needs, your objectives and success measures could include:

•  Increasing customer numbers
•  Increasing profitability per customer
•  Increasing market share
•  Improving responses to campaigns
•  Raising customer satisfaction
•  Improving end-to-end integration of the sales process cycle

The metrics you select for measurement will depend on these objectives.

There are numerous metrics that you can choose from when measuring your performance, and the actual metrics you choose are generally referred to as your key performance indicators (KPIs).

Step 4 – Determine how you will implement CRM

Once you’ve identified all of the objectives of your CRM implementation, you will need to determine how you are actually going to roll it out. What channels will you use? What touchpoints will you leverage? What data will you need for this? And what tools will you need to gather this data and implement your initiatives across these channels? How will you address the shift and communicate with your internal stakeholders before you launch the initiative to your external ones?

You will need to make choices based on what is available to you, or what you intend on embracing. The digital space offers a range of innovative spaces for CRM delivery; you simply need to get creative in your execution.

Step 5 – Choose the right tools

There are lots of excellent CRM tools available, but these are useless without a clear CRM strategy in place. You can only select your tools once you know what your objectives are, what touchpoints and channels you are going to utilise and what data you need to collect and analyse.

CRM systems that gather information on customer preferences and needs, as well as information on competitors and in the industry in general, let organisations focus on providing customer solutions instead of simply pushing products. 

Customer-centric vs. customer-driven organisations

Effective CRM places the customer’s needs first in all dealings with the brand. However, there is a vast difference between a customer-centric organisation and a customer-driven one.

Placing the customer at the centre of an organisation’s business planning and execution is different to having customers drive the direction of a business. Many new, web-based businesses rely on the latter, and actively encourage customers to take the lead and add value to the business.

Services such as Flickr (www.flickr.com) and Twitter (www.twitter.com) are user-driven rather than user-centric. They provide tools that enable users to make the service their own, often by allowing outside developers to create supplementary services. So, Flickr users can export their images and use them to make custom business cards on Moo (www.moo.com). There are many auxiliary services
based on Twitter such as analysis services (www.klout.com) and access services (www.twhirl.org).

Savvy organisations can also provide tools to customers to drive their business, passing on tasks to customers that might ordinarily have been performed by the organisation. For example, many airlines now allow travellers to check in online prior to arriving at the airport. As more travellers elect to check themselves in, staff costs for airlines can be reduced. The travellers are doing the job for free (and are getting a better experience too).

Customer-centric strategy, on the other hand, uses data to present the best possible experience to the customer. Amazon’s collaborative filtering is an example of a customer-centric approach. Using customer data, Amazon will share products that you are more likely to prefer.

Customer-centric experiences are about personalisation: using data to create a tailored experience for the customer. Customer-driven experiences are about customisation: providing the tools that let a customer tailor their own experience.

Social CRM and online monitoring

Social CRM can also make use of online reputation management and monitoring tools. Online monitoring, or reputation management, entails knowing what is being said about your organisation and ensuring that you are leading the conversation.

By using these tools, brands can rate and sort these mentions based on their sentiment. This allows them to effectively test the temperature of the online community’s feeling towards the brand, which can then guide any future action.

Social CRM and support

Social customers are increasingly turning to social media channels for support. With the immediate accessibility offered through mobile devices, they see this as a convenient channel to communicate with brands. This means that brands need to respond quickly and transparently to consumers’ questions, gripes and even compliments. A support query going unanswered on Twitter, for instance, is likely to cause frustration for the consumer, and prompt them to take a situation that is already visible to other consumers even further, potentially causing a brand crisis.

Brands should carefully consider whether all social media channels are appropriate for them, and be prepared for any eventuality. Brands that are well liked will generally have positive responses on social media, those that receive a mediocre response from consumers will have a bit of a mixed bag, but those that have a lot of support issues are likely to experience very large numbers of complaints that need to be addressed.

Social support staff should have access to all the historical data relating to customer issues – such as all the data collected about previous complaints and reference numbers. In this way, they can respond directly to the consumer in the social channel that they’ve selected and escalate the problem appropriately.

Social CRM

Widespread social media usage means that CRM has to be conducted in this forum in order to deliver an all-round experience for the customer. Not only should social media be integrated into any existing CRM strategy and looked at from a touchpoint and channel perspective, but social media can also be used to drive CRM.

CRM should embrace the social customer – effectively summed up by social CRM expert Paul Greenberg as follows:

“Social customers are not the customers of yore. They trust their peers, are connected via the web and mobile devices to those peers as much of a day as they would like. They expect information to be available to them on demand … They require transparency and authenticity from their peers and the companies they choose to deal with” (Greenberg, 2010).

Social media platforms allow customers to easily share their brand experience (good or bad) with their online social connections, who in turn can share this experience on. This means a potential word-of-mouth audience of millions could witness a single user’s brand experience and weigh in on the situation. Social customers place a great deal of value on the opinions of their peers, and are more likely to look favourably on a brand, product or service if a peer has recommended or praised it. In fact, the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual trust and credibility survey, saw trust in social media increase by 75%, noting that respondents are placing more and more importance on information gathered from
this space (Edelman, 2012).

Brands have realised that they need to leverage this in their CRM strategies and now understand that communication is not one way (from brand to consumer), or even two way (between consumer and brand) but multi-directional (brand to consumer, consumer to brand, consumer to consumer).

The convergence of social media with CRM has been termed social CRM or CRM 2.0, and has developed into a field on its own.

CRM implementations

CRM should infuse every aspect of a business (in the same way that marketing should be integral to everything you do), but it is useful to look at the different ways CRM is implemented.

Marketing

•  Conduct personalised targeting and profiling across a range of marketing channels such as telemarketing, email marketing, social media marketing and campaign management projects.
•  Place the right mix of a company’s products and services in front of each customer at the right time.
•  Understand what customers do and want, matching that knowledge to product and service information and measuring success.

Sales

•  Ensure the customer receives the correct product.
•  Ensure correct sales-related processes are carried out within the organisation. This could include:
     o  Client or campaign management
     o  Sales configuration (for configuring products, pricing, etc.)
     o  Call management
     o  Contact management
     o  Ad management
     o  Sales force automation (including territory)
     o  Account and lead management systems
•  Enable all parties in the transaction to interact with one another.
•  Include systems that put sales reps directly in touch with customers at the point of sale.

Service and service fulfilment

•  Improve the service you give to current customers through:
     o  Email response management
     o  Social media support systems
     o  Telephony capabilities such as automatic call distribution
     o  Computer-telephony integration
     o  Queue/workflow management
     o  Interactive voice response and predictive dialing
•  Include the development of problem resolution systems, workflow automation and field service dispatch systems.

Services invoked by the customer

•  Create and manage systems or capabilities that can be directly invoked by the customer:
    o  Web self-service
    o  Search
    o  Instant messaging
    o  Email queries
    o  Voice over IP (VoIP)
    o  Browser and application sharing
    o  Conferencing
    o  “Call me” capabilities
    o  Social media support
    o  Online forums

Putting a value on CRM

Broadly, CRM can be looked at from:

•  A marketing perspective – increasing the number of people who know about your service or product
•  A cost perspective – decreasing the amount you spend on customers; it costs more to attract a new customer than maintain an existing one
•  A sales perspective – turning the people who know about your service or product into people who have made a purchase
•  A service perspective – ensuring people who have interacted with you are satisfied and delighted.
Effective CRM can also create a powerful new marketing and referral force for a company: its happy customers. Delighting customers fosters positive word of mouth.

The first step to any CRM initiative is to understand the value of a customer relationship to a business.

Relationship value = Revenue generated by customer – Cost

The benefits of CRM

At its core, effective CRM promises the following:

•  Increased revenue and profitability
•  Improved customer satisfaction and loyalty
•  Improved service delivery and operational efficiencies
•  Decreased acquisition costs – keeping churn low through CRM offsets the need to spend as much on acquisition of new clients, while retention of existing ones is cheaper for obvious reasons

Maintaining good customer relationships is critical to the success of a business. The cost associated with acquiring a new customer is generally far higher than the cost of maintaining an existing customer relationship. While an investment in a CRM communication programme or platform can be large, these costs are often offset over the increased revenue generated by encouraging repeat business.

CRM loyalty programs

There is a difference between CRM and loyalty programmes – often loyalty programmes actively seek to maintain customers by rewarding them with a hard currency, like points. Loyalty programmes are designed to develop and maintain customer relationships over a sustained period of time by rewarding them for every interactionwith the brand – for instance, you may earn points on a purchase, for shopping on certain days, completing a survey, or choosing to receive a statement by email.

Consider health insurer Discovery and their Vitality program: it aims to keep customers healthy by rewarding them for health-related behaviours like exercising, having regular check-ups, stopping smoking and buying fresh foods. By doing so, it reduces the burden of ill-heath on the medical aid itself.

Not all loyalty programmes are created equal. Many brands have embraced them as a way to improve their sales, and consumers have come to believe that they are simply a way of extorting more money from them.

To create an effective loyalty programme, consider the following:

•  Carefully calculate the earning and redemption rates of points – a loyalty programme needs to give the appearance of real value, while working within the company’s profit projections
•  Loyalty programmes are about engagement – you need to find a way to partner with the customer
•  Rewards are key to success – you need to reward the customer in a way that is real and desirable
•  Customer care is important – technology allows for effective real-time conversations
•  Data is central to success – you need to maintain accurate records in one central place
•  Digital allows for innovation – this can apply to new payment technology, digital communications channels and more
•  Trust is pivotal to success – customers need to know that their data is being protected and that you will honour your commitments
•  Loyalty programmes are not quick wins– consider up-front how the programme might come to a close or you risk alienating and disappointing customers and undoing any positive results

Understanding customer lifetime value

CLV is the profitability of a customer over their entire relationship with the business. Businesses need to look at long-term customer satisfaction and relationship management, rather than short-term campaigns and quick wins – this approach leads to increased value over the entire lifetime of a customer and means that CLV is a metric central to any CRM initiative.

It’s important to look at your customer base and segment them according to how often they purchase and how much they spend with your company. Very often, customers who spend more cost more to acquire, but they might also stay with the company for longer. Referrals made by a customer can also be included as part of the revenue generated by the customer.

The key is to understand these costs and then target your CRM strategies appropriately. CLV lets you decide what a particular type of customer is really worth to your business, and then lets you decide how much you are willing to spend to win or retain them.

For example, a potential customer looking to purchase a digital camera is likely to search on Google for cameras. As a company selling digital cameras, your excellent search advert and compelling offer attract the potential customer, who clicks through to your website. Impressed with your product offering, the user purchases a camera from you, and signs up to your email newsletter as part of the payment process.

Analysing the amount spent on your search campaign against the sales attributed to the campaign will give the cost per acquisition of each sale. In this case, this is the cost of acquiring the new customer. As the user’s now signed up to your newsletter, each month you send her compelling information about products she might be interested in. These newsletters could be focused on her obvious interest in photography, and highlight additional products she can use with her new camera. The costs associated with sending these emails are the costs of maintaining the relationship with the customer. When she purchases from you again, these costs can be measured against the repeat sales likely to be made over the course of the customer’s lifetime.

Assuming that a customer buys a new camera every three years, moves up from a basic model to a more expensive model, perhaps buys a video recorder at a certain point – all of these allow a company to calculate a lifetime value and ensure that their spending on a particular customer is justified.

Analysing data for marketing

One of the most powerful features of interactions and transactions over the Internet is that everything is tracked and recorded (see the Data Analytics and Conversion Optimisation). This provides a wealth of data that can be analysed to make business decisions.

For CRM, this means that the customer acquisition source can be recorded and analysed against sales data. This leads to a very accurate return on investment (ROI) calculation and indicates where CRM and marketing efforts should be focused.

ROI stands for return on investment – and it’s key to understanding whether marketing efforts have been successful. Here’s a simple example: Company A sells accounting software and makes R10 000 on each product it sells. It sends an email to its customer base – people who have bought a previous version of the software and might be interested in upgrading. The campaign has an overall cost
of R100 000. Of the 5 000 people who receive the email, 10% decide to buy. That means it cost R200 to acquire each of the 500 customers. The company has made R5 million – an ROI of 50:1.

The key to effective use of technology in CRM is integration. Ensure that all channels can be tracked, and that information is usable to all parties within an organisation. Knowing where your customers come from, but not what they purchase, is pointless: these two metrics need to be compared in order to produce actionable insights.

Analysing CRM data can aid marketing initiatives in a variety of ways:

•  Campaign analysis – find out which marketing campaigns are leading to the best returns so you can refine them and increase ROI
•  Personalisation – customise your communications to each customer
•  Event monitoring – tie offline events, like shows or sales, to your online interactions and sales
•  Predictive modelling – predict a customer’s future behaviour and meet this need at the right time
•  Improved customer segmentation, including:
     o  Customer lifetime value (CLV) analysis – predicting each customer’s lifetime value and managing each segment appropriately (for example, offering special deals and discounts)
     o  Advanced customer profiles that identify certain behaviours, such as big spenders or those who look for bargains by attending sales. This information can be used to tailor marketing communications accordingly
     o  Customer prioritisation – target small groups of customers with customised products and service offerings that are aligned to meet customer needs, rather than simply generic current offerings. You should craft specialised retention strategies for customers with the highest CLV
     o  Identifying brand influencers and advocates. Consider the realm of social media, where influencers are central to the spread of content. Brands are increasingly prioritising relationship building with social media influencers to build brand advocates who will help market the business for them. By identifying which customers are providing the most value and positively influencing others to become customers, you can focus efforts towards them and increase their loyalty, creating true
brand advocates

Keeping data fresh

Call it what you will, but “stale”, “outdated” or “unhealthy” data doesn’t benefit anyone. Some generic older data can help you assess trends over time, but identifiable customer data is usually useless if not up to date. People move house, update their contact numbers and email addresses, change jobs. They earn more or less, stop working, start working, have kids, retire. All of these mean that their needs change, and their contactability changes, so maintaining a customer relationship and delivering the things they want becomes impossible.

So, how do you keep your data fresh?

For generic data (like web analytics), you must continuously monitor trends and note what causes changes overtime. This is also useful for monitoring trends and identifying gaps in data when a business evolves. For instance, if you know that you generally receive increased website and store visits during December, but your sales drop, you know that you need to gather more data around your inventory and in-store environment during that time.

Keeping identifiable data current means you need to facilitate regular dialogue with contacts on your database. Whether it’s through a call centre, an online prompt or a quick question at your in-store point of sale, there needs to be a plan for updating details at regular intervals.

Collating and organising your data

Typically, you’ll find that a business has:
•  One or more databases – e.g. email, customer, mobile, or call centre databases.
•  A point of sale system where product purchase data is stored.
•  Various forms of web data – from display or search networks, keyword research, site analytics, social media or email marketing.
•  Social media profiles on sites like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn (which can also be considered databases of sorts).

CRM software can be used to automate lead and sales processes, and to collect all of this customer information in a centralised place, allowing a company to get a holistic view of the customer – from this, meaningful data insights can emerge.

Organisations can be large, and a customer often speaks to several members of the organisation, depending on the nature of the communication. It would be extremely frustrating for the customer to have to explain all previous dealings with the organisation each time, and equally frustrating for an organisation not to know who has spoken previously with a customer and what was dealt with. This could be a touchpoint at which a company falls down, and leaves a less than positive impression with the customer.

Fortunately, there are many technological options that help to record all this information in one place. Most of these services can also schedule elements of the sales process, and set reminders where appropriate for follow-up action.

Some notable examples include SalesForce (www.salesforce.com), Genius (www.genius.com) and Highrise (www.highrisehq.com) from 37 signals. Bespoke technology tailored to business problems can have remarkable results.

Where and how to gather CRM data

CRM data is gathered from a variety of touchpoints. Let’s look at some of the possible opportunities for CRM data capture and analysis. Each avenue discussed below collects a range of data from whichever touchpoints the business deems valuable.

Traditional CRM system data

Most traditional CRM systems are used to capture data for sales, support and marketing purposes. On top of simply creating a central repository for data access, these systems and their related databases also offer basic analytics. The actual range of data collected within the traditional CRM system is dictated by the CRM objectives. For instance, data could include:

•  Demographic details on potential leads, current leads and contacts, such as age, gender, income, etc.
•  Quotes, sales, purchase orders and invoices (transactional data)
•  Psychographic data on contacts such as customer values, attitudes, interests, etc.
•  Service and support records
•  Customer reviews or satisfaction surveys
•  Web registration data
•  Shipping and fulfilment dates, such as when orders were shipped and delivered

Data mining

Data mining involves analysing data to discover unknown patterns or connections. It is usually conducted on large datasets and looks for patterns that are not obvious. Data is analysed with statistical algorithms that look for correlations. It is used by businesses to better understand customers and their behaviour, and then to use this data to make more informed business decisions. For instance, women might traditionally be shopping for nappies during the week. But on the weekend, men
become the primary nappy-shoppers. The things that they choose to purchase on the weekend, such as beer or chips, might dictate different product placement in a store over a weekend.

Analytics data

Analytics data is generally captured through specialised analytics software packages. These packages can be used to measure most, if not all, digital marketing campaigns. Web analytics should always look at the various campaigns being run. For example, generating high traffic volumes by employing CRM marketing tactics like email marketing can prove to be a pointless and costly exercise if the visitors that you drive to the site are leaving without achieving one (or more) of your website’s goals.

Social media monitoring data

There are many social media metrics that are important to monitor, measure and analyse, and some of these can provide valuable insights for CRM implementation. This can cover everything from quantitative data about number of fans and interactions, to qualitative data about the sentiment towards your brand in the social space.

Customer data

A good CRM programme begins with data. Who are my customers and what do they want? Why did they choose me in the first place? How many of them are active, and continue doing business with me? Why do the others stop?

Often, you will need to research this information. If the company has a database, conducting surveys, focus groups or dipstick telephonic research can help you get an idea. Consider that an Audi Q7 driver is vastly different to an Audi A1 driver, for instance. They both pick the brand for the same reasons, but their motivations behind choosing the products vastly differ.

Data can give you these insights. It can enable a company to create real value for the customer and thereby gain true loyalty. There is little point in running a customer insights survey, looking at the results and saying “that’s interesting” without putting into action any changes suggested by the results. It also means customers are less likely to take part in surveys going forward, and quite rightly so – what’s in it for them? Conversely, if you do action changes, customers will feel increased ownership in the brand and its offering.

The actual database in which you choose to gather and collate data is also crucial. Remember that there are many facets to CRM, and the quality and accessibility of the data will have a major impact on how well these processes run.

When looking at data, it is essential to keep in mind the Pareto principle. The Pareto principle, or 80/20 rule, holds that in many situations approximately 80% of profits are delivered by 20% of customers. Also keep in mind that 20% of customers are responsible for 80% of problems related to service and supply (Koch, 2008).

This means designing solutions with efforts directed at the 20% of customers who generate the most profits. To do this, you should segment customers effectively.

You’ll also want to consider the exact data to collect. While this will depend largely on your business objectives, here are some considerations:

•  Information should be commercially relevant.
•  Capture additional contact details from the customer at every interaction – on purchases, contracts, negotiations, quotes, conversations and so on.
•  Capture any information you send out to the customer.
•  Consider anything that adds value to the relationship.
•  Note any legal implications around capturing data, particularly web-based behavioral data, as the user’s privacy must always be taken into account.

CRM and data

Data is central to the success of CRM initiatives. Knowing who your customer is and what they want makes a CRM strategy successful. Data gathering can begin even before your prospect becomes a customer. Matching a prospect’s profile to the product or offer is the first step.

But data on its own is meaningless if it is not analysed and acted upon. Through analysis, data can be turned into insights, which can then inform the various CRM processes and, indeed, the business itself.

Data should be used to drive consumer loyalty across all possible touch points. Consider the consumer who shops on her store card at a retail outlet. Her transactions are recorded against her card – she is sent offers that detail the latest fashion trends and earns points on her card shopping for these. At some point, her transactional data shows that she has started shopping for baby clothes – she can
now be cross-sold products to do with babies, and rewarded with double points when she buys them. Now she is upping her spend in the store, cross-shopping for both herself and her family and being rewarded for this, thus ensuring that the retail outlet is offering her value and retaining her business.

Customer loyalty

The main objective of any CRM strategy should be to gain customer loyalty over the long term. But what is loyalty? This may mean different things for different organisations. Ultimately, it is about acquiring and retaining customers who:

•  Have a projected lifetime value that makes them a valuable prospect to your business
•  Buy a variety of your products or use your services repeatedly during their time as a customer
•  Share their positive experiences with others
•  Provide honest feedback on these products and services, and their experiences
•  Collaborate with you on ways to improve their experiences

Consumer touchpoints

Consumer touchpoints are all the points at which brands touch consumers’ lives during their relationship. This is the starting point for all CRM – a brand needs to speak with one voice across all of these touchpoints and deliver a rewarding experience every time it interacts with its customers. Touchpoints can be brand initiated (for example, a brand sending an email newsletter) or customer initiated (for example, the customer making a purchase in a store).

People don’t start out as customers; they begin as prospects – people who merely view a business’s offering. Once a prospect has expressed interest, CRM can help to convert them into a customer. Some people will always shop on price – they need to be converted to loyal customers. Here brand perception and service are often the differentiators. Consider the prospect who walks into a car dealership and is given outstanding service. In this case, CRM – in the form of an aware and
trained sales force – can help turn a prospect into a customer.

A consumer touchpoint can be as simple as a print or banner ad. It can also be as multifaceted as a conversation between a call centre agent and a customer. It can be a timely tweet, or an outbound email giving the customer details about their account. Even statements and bills are touchpoints – and need to be managed carefully to ensure that the brand continues its relationship with the customer
successfully.

Customer touchpoints can generally be divided into three spheres or phases.Pre-purchase or pre-usage covers the various ways brands and prospects interact before the prospect decides to conduct business with a company. The brand’s goals here are to:

•  Gain customers
•  Heighten brand awareness
•  Shape brand perceptions – to highlight the benefits it offers over competitors
•  Indicate how the brand provides value and fulfils the needs and wants of
consumers
•  Educate consumers about products and services

Purchase or usagecovers the touchpoints at which the customer decides to purchase a product, use a service or convert according to set criteria, and initiates the brand-customer relationship. The key goals are to:

•  Instil confidence
•  Deliver value
•  Reinforce the purchase decision
•  Heighten brand perceptions

Post-purchase or usagecovers all the post-sale interactions between the brand and customer. Now, the brand wants to:

•  Develop a relationship
•  Maximise the customer experience
•  Deliver on the brand promise
•  Increase brand loyalty
•  Remain top of mind
•  Invite repeat purchases