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Getting More Sales Out of Natural Search: Kefta Offers Advice to Help Marketers Boost Site Conversion From Search Traffic

Posted on: Tuesday, 20 June 2006, 09:00 CDT

Last year, marketers spent eight times more money on paid search than they did on organic search. However, organic search delivered up to 87% of all commercial traffic from those same search engines. In essence, marketers spent nearly $6 billion on a minority of their search traffic, while they nearly ignored the majority. Today, current best practices for organic search are primarily focused on position instead of online conversion improvement and website personalization. The result is that organic search produces half the conversion rate of paid search campaigns.

According to Kefta, the leader in personalized marketing solutions, marketers can reap huge rewards by taking an active role in segmenting and targeting organic search traffic for key site pages. My Wedding Favors, for example, saw an overall conversion lift of 65% by using this strategy on the high-ranking www.myweddingfavors.com page.

Often times, the best performing landing pages don't get ranked highly in natural search results because the text is too short and much of the communication relies upon graphics. On the other hand, pages that rank highly in natural search tend to be rich in text and content, but aren't customized to address core needs or have strong selling content.

Drawing on client experiences, Kefta offers several concrete steps that marketers can take to immediately boost online conversion rates and revenues from organic search:

1. Build a user profile: Virtually all marketers ignore the user's natural search queries. A natural search query provides insight into each visitor's needs and desires, including whether they are price sensitive, brand aware or product focused. By capturing this query, along with other intrinsic characteristics like IP address and location, a marketer immediately knows quite a bit about visitors to its site.

2. Move beyond product features: Listen to your site visitors. Many analytics packages allow you to review the organic search queries used to reach each page. You may be surprised to find that your visitors use unusual terms to find your site. Often times, they use terms that demonstrate their interest or stage in the shopping process such as price sensitivity, quality orientation, brand recognition, or some other relevant dimensions. How much more successful would your page be if you could focus a more directed message to deliver against needs?

3. Liven Up Your Home Page: Marketers can leverage natural search terms to deliver a targeted and relevant experience to all visitors, even those who land on a generic home page. Consider targeting each searcher with a relevant graphic promotion that reflects the search term that brought them to your site. Kefta's clients are able to increase overall online conversion rates 30-80% by matching the featured picture on their homepage to the natural search query.

4. Retarget: When a visitor comes to your site via a natural search term and then leaves without converting, don't let them get away for good! These are potential customers who typically benefit from a secondary campaign where you can leverage what you already know about their initial search queries through targeted offsite banner ads, or exit pop-ups and follow-up emails. Today, shoppers are viewing more of your competitors, and using shopping engines and word of mouth sites to gain knowledge before a purchase. Develop a personalization campaign that allows you to touch these prospects using a relevant message that leverages the knowledge you already have.

About Kefta

Kefta is the leader in personalized marketing solutions. Global brands including GMAC, MetLife Bank, Palm and Verizon use Kefta Dynamic Targeting to deliver timely, relevant content to site visitors based on their unique online behavior -- immediately boosting conversion, revenues, and customer loyalty. The hosted Kefta service automatically recognizes and responds to the different needs of Web site visitors, delivering relevant and personalized marketing messages in real-time on Web sites, banners, pop-up windows, and emails. Kefta's Dynamic Targeting solution is rapidly implemented, ongoing maintenance is minimal, and results are immediate. Founded in 2000, the company has headquarters in San Francisco, California. For more information, visit http://www.kefta.com.

 Media Inquiries: For more information, please contact Contact via http://www.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?id=FB58E9BBEE0D7821  

SOURCE: Kefta Inc.

Source: MARKET WIRE

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