The Turducken Disconnect Revisited: Some sites wise up, others not so much

Posted November 24th, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

Thanksgiving MealAbout a year ago, as Thanksgiving 2008 drew near, I wrote an article about a phenomenon that I dubbed the turducken disconnect. The full title was The Turducken Disconnect: An SEM Fable for the Holidays and the main point, hidden among some seasonal yarn spinning, was this:

If you are A. selling things online, and B. trying–through paid search or organic search–to get people to come to your site to buy those things, then we can reasonably assert C: someone who searches for one of those things and clicks on your link in search results should land on a page featuring the item they were seeking.

I went on to say–by way of example–that if you sell turducken and someone clicks on your paid search ad for turducken, your site should greet them with a turducken. It does not have to be a talking turducken. It doesn’t even need to be a specially-priced turducken (although that could be a good way to convert first-time visitors into first time buyers). The point is, your traffic from the search term “turducken” should be met with turducken, not sausages or fish stew, regardless of how mouth-watering those other items might be. Read the rest of this entry »

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Free Webinar Explores Recession Marketing: From Pre-click to Post-click

Posted September 4th, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

Please join us on September 16 at 12pm EDT / 9am PDT, for a free online marketing webinar: “Recession Marketing: From Pre-click to Post-click.” Here’s what you’ll learn:

  • How persona marketing works, from end-to-end, even when times are tough.
  • Why there’s never been a better time to steal market share from your competitors.
  • Practical tips for using your existing analytics data to assess what segmented marketing can do for your bottom line.

This free event features three of the best minds in the business: Bryan Eisenberg, Craig Danuloff, and David Brussin. Just in case these guys are not all equally familiar to you, allow me to add some background:3-experts

Bryan Eisenberg is Chief Persuasion Officer and Co-Founder of FutureNow, and frequent contributor to GrokDotCom, the Marketing Optimization Blog. Bryan is also the author of several marketing bestsellers, including: Call to Action; Waiting For Your Cat To Bark; and Always Be Testing.

Craig Danuloff is President and Founder of ClickEquations, Inc., a leader in paid search management. Craig is a frequent speaker at industry conferences such as SMX and he regularly shares his paid search expertise in the ClickEquations Blog.

As CEO and Co-Founder of Monetate, David Brussin has been working closely with some of the largest and most aggressive online retailers to perfect SaaS-based web site personalization technology and develop winning campaign strategies.

Here’s what they will be talking about: Bryan will explain how “recession marketing” can steal market share from your competitors in this challenging economy; Craig will describe SEM techniques for targeting profitable customers via search campaign design and deep analytics; David will discuss the art and science of deriving and acting upon persona information in the post-click experience.

Hope you can make it. Again, here’s the link to register.

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The Search for Revenue: From pre-click to post-click

Posted February 25th, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

As you probably know, Search Marketing Expo (SMX) is a series of search marketing conferences and expos backed by Search Engine Land. In other words, it’s all about search, about getting people who are searching for something to click on a link to your web site. For most e-commerce sites, search plays a central role in traffic generation, bringing visitors to the web site.

But what happens when those visitors arrive? How does the web site hold their interest and convert visitors into customers after that click? That is the world of post-click marketing. So, it was pretty interesting to me that Gordon Hotchkiss, the CEO of Enquiro, one of North America’s leading search marketing vendors, reportedly had this to say at SMX West in Santa Clara this month:

“post-click marketing moves the needle for our clients more than any other aspect of search marketing.”

This observation, delivered as Mr. Hotchkiss was moderating a panel on Advanced Landing Page Strategies, is interesting for several reasons. First of all, one could argue that post-click marketing is not really search marketing at all. Sure, you can link search-derived traffic to post-click campaigns, but you can also run successful post-click campaigns that are entirely independent of your search marketing campaigns. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Turducken Disconnect: An SEM Fable for the Holidays

Posted November 25th, 2008, by Stephen Cobb

Insights into online marketing can come from strange quarters, even from strange recipes. Bear with me while I tell a story that began at a wedding reception in Toronto a few months ago. I was standing beside a delicious buffet served in a wonderful Canadian garden when a young lady asked me if I had ever heard of turducken.

Why did she ask me? Did the rate at which I was consuming bacon wrapped chicken livers suggest I’d be a turducken aficionado? Perhaps she mistook my gray hair as a sign of wisdom (actually, it’s just a sign of advancing age). In fact, until she uttered the word, I had never heard of turducken. But I didn’t want her to know that, so I bluffed: “Turducken? In what context?”

(For all I knew, Turducken could be the name of a band, or a dance, or something you do in night clubs when you’re not dancing. The last thing I wanted to do was appear uncool. I mean, if the kids were going turducken later, I wanted to be invited along.)

Fortunately, my bluff was not called. A handsome young guest, whose cool factor was apparently not in doubt simply blurted out, “What’s a turducken?” That’s when the young lady said: “Turducken is a chicken cooked inside a duck cooked inside a turkey.”

In a further stroke of luck the young man decided this turducken thing was a hoax and he began to question the lady’s sincerity. That gave me a chance to whip out my Treo and Google it, earning several cool points as I flashed the result with great chivalry. The young lady was right. Google had spoken. Turducken is real.

And so the story would have ended, were it not for two things: my wife’s health, which has not been too good lately; and Thanksgiving, which kind of crept up on us this year. That is why, a few days ago, I was sitting at my computer wondering: “What could Stephen cook for Thanksgiving dinner?” In the past I’ve managed to cook several chickens; a few Christmases ago I roasted a goose, but to be honest I have never tackled a Thanksgiving turkey. That’s when turducken came to mind!

So I Googled it. As expected, the search results were sprinkled with words that suggested one could order turducken online, for immediate delivery, pre-cooked if necessary. Indeed, it looked like several vendors were vying for my turducken business. So I began to click away.

And that’s when I found the turducken disconnect. If you are trying to sell turducken online, anyone who searches for turducken and clicks on your paid search placement should be greeted by what? Yes! Turducken. It doesn’t have to be an animated turducken. It doesn’t have to be a talking turducken. It doesn’t even need to be a specially-priced turducken (although that could be a good way to convert first-time visitors into first time buyers). The point is, we should see a turducken not a sausage. And we shouldn’t have to scroll down the page to find our search target. Most online shoppers are not lazy, they’re just busy. If I Google turducken, show me your turducken and I may well order one.

Now, I realize that turducken is not, as yet, a major segment of the online food market. So is it fair to pick on fledgling e-tailers who haven’t yet learned to hook their search engine marketing efforts to custom landing pages and behavior-based visitor-metrics? Maybe it’s not fair, but the turducken disconnect is not confined to regional cuisine.

When I Googled “cooked turkey” I got a paid ad proclaiming “Roasted Turkey…Gourmet Prepared Turkeys. Memorable Meals since 1957.” It took me to a page totally bereft of turkeys. Of course, it’s not just online food retailing that suffers from this problem. Time and again when shopping online I click a search result that leads me to a page only vaguely connected to my search string.

Given the amount of money companies are spending to be at the top of the search result stack, it’s a real pity they don’t spend just a little more on converting that initial click into an engagement, a conversation, and a better chance at conversion. Merchants who don’t keep an eye on what happens post-click are not going to get results as good as those who do.

And thus endeth the fable.
The moral is hopefully clear.
Don’t waste your money on search results
If you don’t know how to take it from there.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Posted in General, Housekeeping, Industry, Opinion