I’m reminded every day that the principles of classical marketing can
be leveraged to make search into an even more powerful platform than it
already is. For example, when I was a marketing cub in the consumer packaged goods industry back in the mid-1980s, I remember going to a seminar hosted by the promotions and marketing services staff of my company, put on for the benefit of the brand mangers. The seminar presented research the company had done on how to increase redemption rates for free-standing inserts (FSIs).
Since there is a fixed-cost component to placing the coupons in the newspapers, if the coupon redeems at a higher rate, the fixed cost would be amortized over more redemptions and therefore the cost per redemption would be lower and the vehicle would be more efficient. Greater efficiency increased the ROI of the vehicle. Here are a few of the principles that we were taught to decrease cost per redemption.
First, place the coupon in the corner of the ad so it is easy to cut out. Communicate the savings offer in the headline. Make the coupon itself the size of a dollar bill. Place the savings amount in the corners of the coupon, like a dollar bill.
As I have been out of the packaged goods space since the late 1990s, it has been quite a while since I have thought about those principles. However, last week as I was writing the response to an RFP question about conversion rates for a large potential client, they all came flooding back as I realized how directly they parallel the approach search marketing firms take to maximizing conversion rates. Namely, there are specific tactics that can be taken on landing pages that will lead to an increase in conversion rate, just as the above tactics proved effective for coupons.
The search marketing industry has only been around for about 10 years. We are young enough as a channel to believe we are truly pioneers in marketing. However, as the above example shows, some approaches are tried and true and can be applied to any new media that may come along.
