Dale and Thomas Popcorn cooks up better blend of paid and natural search
By using a new search management tool to analyze revenue produced by specific paid and natural search keywords, multi-channel retailer Dale and Thomas Popcorn has produced a “dramatic” increase in search marketing return on investment by running a more effective blend of paid and natural search efforts, senior vice president of e-commerce and marketing Paul Goodman tells InternetRetailer.com.
“This has given us the ability to quickly and easily look at the revenue coming through paid and through natural search, down to the revenue generated by specific search terms,” Goodman says.
The search management tool, from Omniture Inc., enables gourmet popcorn merchant Dale and Thomas to blend paid and natural search results to get the highest conversion rates at the lowest cost, he adds. If the term “popcorn” appears high up on the first page of search results, for example, Goodman will reduce the amount it pays for the same term in paid search. But if that term appears too far down in natural search rankings, he’ll take steps to better optimize DaleandThomasPopcorn.com to push up “popcorn” in natural rankings.
Indeed, following that strategy has helped the Englewood, NJ-based retailer get maximum returns on what it spends on “popcorn,” its most important and most expensive search term. “We used to be on page three or four for popcorn in Google natural search results, but today we’re usually number three or four—we compete for those spots with Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia—so we’ve been able to spend less on a popular term that everyone bids on, because we can generate more revenue from the free natural search term than the paid term.”
In a recent Google search for popcorn, Dale and Thomas appeared third in natural rankings and last in the paid listings on the first page of results. As it continues to monitor revenue generated from those terms and compares to paid-search costs, Dale and Thomas may eventually bid even less on popcorn to let it drop further back in paid listings, Goodman adds.
The retailer’s more effective and efficient management of search marketing campaigns has helped Dale and Thomas to double its web site’s visitor-to-sales conversion rates since the beginning of last year’s fall shopping season compared to the same period a year earlier. Also helping to hike those rates has been a redesigned web site, launched last September on an AmericanEagle.com e-commerce platform, along with improvements in e-mail marketing and affiliate marketing campaigns, Goodman says.
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