Keyword Benefit Index – Applying Data to Your Internet Marketing Decisions

We all know the old marketing and advertising model: take out an ad in the paper or buy some billboard space and sit back and see what happens. There are many problems and inefficiencies in this model. First of all, aside from a loose geographic area or subscription audience, there is no way to target the specific groups of people you are interested in reaching. Second, there is no way to gauge the number of people that the advertisements actually reach and, more importantly, effect. Third, once the ad run is finished or the billboard comes down, the only residual benefit is some passing brand recognition.

Internet marketing –  including organic search engine placement, Pay Per Click advertising and online social media  - has decentralized how businesses reach their target audience. With this decentralization has come many advantages. The advertiser can more quickly respond to market shift and trends while focusing marketing dollars on a targeted demographic. However, with this decentralized model lots of people are trying to manage their ad campaigns themselves rather than hire a marketing professional, which comes with many pitfalls. Advertising agencies had focus groups and opinion polls that they used in their process. With the new model people often bypass this step and base campaigns on what they perceive consumer interest to be in their market. By basing their efforts on their perceptions, they are missing out on many of the advantages that online marketing offers.

Why base your online marketing on a guess when you can base it on fact? Thanks to the analytic tools available on the Internet, you can convene a focus group of your own that is made up of your entire market area. At its best, online marketing is driven by keyword data, while everything else (design, functionality and products and services) takes second seat. You can have the most attractive site and the most cutting edge product on the market, but if no one comes to your website then you garner no benefit. This is why keyword data analysis has to take first priority in your online marketing budget.

To frame our investigation of the fundamentals of keyword analysis, lets take and example of a business — we will call it ACME. ACME is trying to decide what keywords to focus on for their new website. The first thing that they have to do in their decision making process is define their online market area (OMA). OMA is made up of every conceivable combination of keywords that a potential customer could type in when looking for ACME’s products or services. Humans are a generally imprecise species and thus there can be literally thousands of keyword combinations, including misspellings, that could relate to ACME’s goods and or services. Having defined this through keyword research, ACME chooses two possible keyword options, X & Y.

While ACME wants to lead with X or Y they also want to take as much advantage of their OMA as possible. However it would be inefficient, expensive and likely impossible to try and optimize ACME’s site for their entire OMA. Because ACME can’t effectively optimize its site for thousands of different keywords, it is necessary for them to focus efforts within some section of the OMA. This is the point where ACME might commit the cardinal sin of online marketing: they may look at their OMA and choose which keyword they want to focus on based on their perceptions of what will bring them the most traffic. To avoid this, ACME needs overlay two more sets of data onto their OMA.

The First set of data is search engine traffic. Getting hard data on the frequency that certain keywords are used helps to focus their efforts on more productive terms within their OMA. This is another point at which people make a classic online marketing blunder. For example judging by the keyword traffic data displayed in figure 1 Acme’s obvious choice would be X.

Fig 1

While selecting keywords from this set of data will be more productive than keywords blindly chosen from the entire OMA, there is still one critical piece of information in ACME’s decision making process that is missing, namely keyword competition.

Keyword competition is defined by the number of websites and pages competing for organic placement for a given search term. ACME makes the right decision and looks at keyword traffic and keyword competition data on the two terms displayed in figure 2.

Fig. 2

With this new source of data, ACME sees that while X has 30% more traffic than Y it has more than twice the amount of competition. To quantify this data we can generate something I have developed called the Keyword Benefit Index, using this simple formula:

Keyword Traffic / Keyword Competition = Keyword Benefit Index (KBI)

In this case, the KBI for term X is .005 compared to .01 for term Y. KBI is a simple tool to evaluate potential keyword benefit for a unit of investment. The actual KBI value is not in a high number — but in providing a scale upon which all the terms can be measured. Once a KBI has been assigned for any given term, the list can be sorted by that KBI value, identifying which keywords offer the most opportunity. When utilized in this case by ACME, they discover that keyword Y is a better keyword choice than keyword X.

This is a simplified version of the data analysis and decision making process necessary for selecting primary keywords for a website. If a company such as ACME is going to take full advantage of this new decentralized advertising model, then they owe it to themselves to utilize the tools – and most importantly the data – that is available to them in today’s online marketplace. To do so they need to develop in-house expertise or hire firms with a strong track record in Search Engine Optimization. Anything short of that is an improper use of their marketing budget.

Video Testimonials: Simple, Inexpensive, Convincing

In Vermont, we have a great tradition called Town Meeting Day, where members of the community come together and vote on local issues.  Depicted in a famous Norman Rockwell image, Town Meeting Day is one of the unique things about Vermont that makes this a wonderful place to call home.  Here in Burlington, our 39,800 residents makes us the largest city in the state (calling it both a city and within Vermont are considered debatable points).  Since we’ve outgrown the high school gym for our Town Meeting day, Burlingtonians go to the polls.  Accordingly, this past March we held an election for Mayor.

Amongst the candidates that ran for office, I publicly supported a moderate independent candidate named Dan Smith.  Unfortunately, he didn’t win.  However, Dan did do some pretty cool stuff on the web much of which involved the use of video.  Using the new $229 HD Flip Mino Video camera, Dan’s staff videoed a number of local supporters, myself included, and uploaded the videos onto youtube.  They then embedded the videos in his site (which is still online, but may not be much longer).  This was pretty simple to do, easy to publish and unique with in the campaign.

So what does this have to do with selling real estate, promoting your company, product or service?  A lot.

I’m a believer that device consolidation will eventually lead to your computer (or iPhone) being the one tool you use to access all media, including television.   At this time, however, video still has a little bit of the “wow” factor still left in it online.  Imagine a new visitor coming to your site and hearing from your clients, on video, talking about how they benefited from working with you?  It would be unique, compelling and not that hard to do.  I’ve mentioned the idea to a number of our real estate clients of videoing a young couple just after they have purchased their first time home.  Hearing them describe how you helped them find, negotiate and close on their home would be compelling.  Unlike a video tour of a home, which I also recommend, a video testimonial has a long shelf life on your site.

We have a couple of clients who have been progressive with their use of video, such as Dan Cypress and Jessica Bridge at RE/MAX North Professionals.  Jessica, who also endorsed Dan Smith, is photogenic and Dan knows how to do a thing or two with iMovie.  However, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to put together a great video about the Vermont Required Consumer Information Disclosure and post it on your site.  All it takes is a little initiative and a investment in a Flip Video Camera.

Please share links with us in the comment section below if you have posted cool videos on your site.

New Sites Launched by Union Street Media

It has been a busy month here at Union Street and we have quite a few new sites which we wanted to share with you.

We have two new real estate clients who have launched in the last month, Northrup Associates Realtors of Lynnfeild Massachusetts and Remax Elite of the Turk and Caicos. They are both excellent examples of how site design can market the area, not just the real estate company. Of course, the outcomes are different because how we choose to market a Boston suburb is much different than how we choose to market a Caribbean island chain. Please visit their sites and see the kind of work we can do in very diverse real estate markets.

We have also launched a new ecommerce website for a great local Vermont Company named Real Good Toys. Real Good Toys makes heirloom quality dollhouse kits of every imaginable style. Please visit their site and see what real craftsmanship looks like!

Northrup Associates Realtors Link

Remax Elite TCI

Real Good Toys

We here at USM are very pleased to add these sites to our portfolio!