What impact has the frequent “flux” with organic search traffic (SEO traffic) had on your traffic? How do you keep your website immune to the vagaries of Google algorithm updates?

Plancess website is quoted often by several third-party vendors and affiliates due to the authentic and genuine information it provides. In fact, Plancess was the eLearning website listed by the top career portals on the day of JEE Main 2015 for providing answer keys, text/video solutions and paper analysis.

How important is mobile traffic to you now (and going forward)?
[VT]: Nearly 45% of our website traffic is via mobile and tablet devices- thats close to 10000 visitors on a daily basis! We expect mobile traffic to go further up as we recognize this global trend. So, we have made PlancessJEE.com mobile-compatible / responsive- easy to read and interact on any screen-size and interface.

To enhance the user experience to the fullest, not only have we optimized our website for mobile devices, we also look into the browser and technology being used. Based on a deep understanding of our users and their usage patterns including operating systems, screen resolutions and several other variables, we have identified the exact pain points of users when using our website. We use this understanding to prioritize fixes and enhancements that can help users get the most from the website.

Please describe in more detail how you analyse user behaviour.
[VT]: We do this with A/B testing or multi-variate testing (MVT) using various tools. We look at heat map analysis and in-page analytics to give a leading indicator of what changes would work best. We implement the “challenger-champion” approach. Any new development is first introduced as a challenger to a certain section of the audience- and if the value addition to business as well as user experience via the challenger is more than our champion, only then we make the necessary changes through out. This way, the bulk of our traffic is always having the best experience out there.

Looking ahead, what is your mobile strategy going forward?
[VT]: Going forward, we’re building more products with a mobile-first mindset such that the product itself is designed in a way that can be engaging for mobile users. This is in-line with the overall strategy at Plancess to keep useful content front and centre of our offering. We aim to provide
the best intellectual experience, rather than having a mobile app without top-notch content.

In this regard, we’re building a module based eLearning approach via an Android/iOS application, and an assessment platform to complement the user learning. Further, we’ve identified some really amazing indicators of tracking user behaviour on this mobile app – which is not only customized for the right technology, but will also serve as a personal dashboard. It will provide a completely unique experience for every individual using the app and help them derive genuine value out of the product. We’re going to launch these within the next few months.

What advice would you give to start-ups in relation to quickly scaling up traffic acquisition?
[VT]: Digital marketing is not as easy as it seems to be- and it is not because of the tools that it is based on, but because of whom the marketing is subjected to. At Plancess, we believe that our users are not only intelligent and motivated, but also extremely dynamic. They can judge right from wrong- and are increasingly connected. Best quality content and user experience are critical. A happy customer is worth a lot more in today’s world. I would suggest the following do’s and don’ts for marketers trying to scale up traffic acquisition.

Do
a. Build content – original and authentic information
b. Offer great user experience – customer-centric as opposed to product-centric
c. Provide pre-sales and post-sales service- small gestures go a long way
d. Look for and develop referral/social traffic

Don’t
a. Engage in Black-hat marketing – be it with SEO or making false-claims, etc.
b. Focus on short term gain at the cost of long-term relationship with users – they’ll know (as will Google!)
c. Lead with a sales-driven approach instead of user value addition (counsellor approach)

What are the major challenges you face currently in relation to your online marketing efforts?
[VT]: – Finding new channels that can perform as well as our existing channels
– Going on a commission per sale as against to commission per lead with our affiliate partners
– Reaching newer audiences/ geographies: bulk of our website traffic is from tier 1/tier 2 cities but we really need to penetrate the interiors of the country to become a household name for students preparing for JEE.
– Online merchandising – many of our users still don’t have access to online banking and hence depend on parents. Hence a lot of sales have to be closed offline (COD) as against completing the transaction online.

How do you see online marketing evolve in the next couple of years?
[VT]: With growing Internet penetration, online marketing will undoubtedly provide the vital interface for firms to their target customers. Also, the growth in mobile phone usage enables easier reach to users. From a user perspective, access to information will become much easier and convenient. Users will be more informed, mobile and self-aware.

From a marketing perspective, it is the time for customer centricity overshadowing product centricity. In the eLearning realm, with most academic resources being available online, education is going to become a hot space with companies fighting for large ‘traffic-share’ instead of just having a strong ‘market-share’.

Recognising this, we are betting on providing the best content rather than the best technology – because in the long run, the value that users derive from our product will be the key differentiator critical to our success.

In the first of a two-part article featuring edited excerpts from the interview, Vaibhav attributes their success to a strong content-driven strategy. He also feels that search marketing is still a need-to-have avenue, when compared with social or display advertising that seem to be more of ‘good-to-have’ avenues. Vaibhav also has a slightly contrarian view on the growth/ effectiveness of online display advertising.

What have been the most effective strategies you have employed to grow the traffic to your website? Why do you think they have been effective?
[Vaibhav Tamrakar]: Plancess has always been a content driven company- and we strongly believe in the notion that content is king! We believe we have the best quality content in our preparation material, carefully crafted by our team of in-house experts and Top 100 IITians, whom we call our “Gurus”.

As part of our content strategy, we launched JEE Mag- a blog generated in-house- that serves as a one-stop portal for all news related to JEE, preparation techniques, tips-n-hacks from our Gurus and any other query that a student might have. We continuously strive to put the best resources on our website that have helped thousands of students realize their dreams.

Our sustained efforts at translating students’ dreams to reality have also helped us achieve our own goals. Today, hundreds of thousands of JEE aspirants flock to our website. We hope to keep them engaged with the quality of our content and the latest information pertaining to engineering.

What’s your take on the relative effectiveness of search marketing (both organic and paid-for) when compared social media marketing, other display advertising and offline marketing?
[VT]: Social media marketing: I believe Social is a ‘good-to-have’ platform, from a customer engagement perspective, and to give a potential touch point in case the user has some product related query, or is looking for some information. From a brand recognition perspective, it makes sense to be present where our users spend a lot of their time so that the brand gives an impression that we’re there when you need us.

At the same time, it is not a mission critical platform– i.e. if the social media page is not very active, it doesn’t mean the brand is not doing well. It might well be doing wonders with the product, and yet not really be up-to-date on social.

Search, on the other hand, is a vital ‘need-to-have’ platform. The user is becoming increasingly Internet-savvy. They cannot be coerced to view only one brand- and more often than not, are comparing various offerings via the Internet. Being strategically present there as a brand becomes really important.

Display advertising: A few years ago, display advertising was a really good mechanism to bring to the user product-centric marketing by displaying the best product offering from a company. Users did not actively check out brands on the Internet- and mostly used it as an information portal.

However, as the Internet has blended in with users’ lives, coupled with screen size getting smaller and smaller (read mobile/wearable devices), display advertising is losing its charm. Moreover, as the websites are themselves trying to provide the best UX to users, a lot of advertising gets unnoticed (‘banner blindness’).

On the other hand, search is not just ‘static SEO’ anymore due to personalisation of search results and a host of other factors. As a result, the ads/search experience is heavily customised to what the user wants. Consequently, these targeted search ads tend to yield much better conversion rates compared to display advertising.

Offline marketing: With increased Internet penetration and the proliferation of portable Internet devices- users tend to be always online. The amount of attention to billboards, banners/posters (outdoor advertising) gets has been reduced to minimal.

In fact, the millennials and the generation Z have pretty much taken over from the baby boomers and generation X. This generation likes the flavour of open space, free information and being connected to each other. Hence static marketing like print media/ TV commercials largely go unnoticed when compared to referral, social and online behaviour. Only brands that have a universal appeal – catering to a very diverse range of markets – across cultures, language, ages barrier – look towards these channels owing to their non-targeted approach. And of course, it is quite difficult to monitor ROI from these channels.

- See part 2: Customer-centric marketing, great user experience are key

See more news, views and tips on Search Engine Marketing, Display Advertising and Social Media Marketing, with an Indian context.

The new Atlas solution will use “people-based marketing”, moving away from the use of cookies which is the prevalent method to serve and measure advertising. “Cookies don’t work on mobile, are becoming less accurate in demographic targeting and can’t easily or accurately measure the customer purchase funnel across browsers and devices or into the offline world. People-based marketing solves these problems,” writes Erik Johnson, Head of Atlas, on the Atlas blog.

Atlas Solutions is a Facebook company, after the latter acquired it from Microsoft for a reported $100 million in 2013. Not only will Atlas use data from Facebook to help advertisers with their targeting, but the data available to Facebook from different users of the Atlas platform is likely to be used by the social network to develop or customise its offerings.

The question is whether Atlas can become a viable competitor to Google’s DoubleClick solution.

- The NetMarketer Editorial Bureau

The key details of the event are given below:

Date: 26 – 29 Jun 2014
Location: The Lalit, Grand Palace, Srinagar
Objective: To exchange collective ideas for peer-to-peer networking and discuss the framework required to create, measure, and optimize digital advertising experience.
Speakers: To be announced

Participation at this event is by invitation only. To request for a special invitation, please mail: latika@iamai.in

For more information, click here:

According to a company release, the Remarketing DSP provides the self-serve benefits of a traditional DSP model together with the ROI and scale of remarketing. Key features include native dynamic creative optimization, advanced audience segmentation, and built-in performance optimization. Advertisers will have the flexibility to self-manage their campaigns using the platform or leverage Komli’s campaign management and optimization expertise.

Komli’s VP of Remarketing, Ashwin Puri says that remarketing will soon be one of the largest channels for digital performance advertising and therefore the medium required greater transparency and control for advertisers.

For search marketers, the biggest challenge is to stay abreast of the new amendments to leverage the new tools and optimize their campaign. If you stay updated on the Google AdWords change wave front, you will get an upper hand in your search marketing.

This piece is a compilation of the recent changes introduced by Google AdWords and the probable impact of these changes on advertisers or marketers.

Changes to Google AdWords

1. Introduction of Flexible Targeting Tab

When: June 29, 2012

Change: A new interface has been added in AdWords to facilitate display buying. The Display Network latest feature makes display buying easier and efficient by combining marketers’ targeting, bidding, and optimizing at one place. In short, a campaign manager gets greater control over the display ads with this feature.

Impact: Earlier PPC campaign handlers were able to make ad changes at the campaign level. With this new addition, a campaign manager can choose where his ads would display at the ‘adgroup’ level. In short, the manager gets greater control to decide where to display the ads and choose the audience. As of now, the flexible reach tab is an optional setting but it will soon replace the Broad and Specific reach options by the end of 2012. If a marketer decides to select this option, it will become a default setting and the ad manager cannot go back to Broad or Specific reach. This could hamper the flexibility for the manager per se as he cannot switch back.

For detailed info, click here.

2. Introduction of AdWords Editor 9.8.1

When: June 28, 2012

Change: Google launched the AdWords Editor version 9.8.1. It lets marketers manage local targeting more conveniently.

Two new ad tabs have been added; dynamic search ads and product listing ads. It lets marketers view their ads and make alterations or additions easily. These two new targeting tabs also lets you manage product targets and dynamic ad targets.

Impact: The new location targeting setting lets marketers easily add locations in bulk. Besides, there is also a ‘Location Exclusions’ option that lets online marketers narrow their target more efficiently. The upgrade to the offline editor will certainly benefit those who run large campaigns and are used to the Adwords Editor.

For detailed info, click here.

3. Ad rotation changes

When: April 30, 2012

Change: Earlier ads could be rotated for an indefinite period of time. The default settings were “Optimize for Clicks” with another option being ‘rotate evenly’ and ‘optimize for conversions’. These three options let  PPC account managers experiment with the best click-through rate (CTR) and conversions. With the change in Ad rotation, the PPC managers have a time limit of just 30 days to run the tests w.r.t which ad runs vs those that does not. In short, after 30 days of even rotation, the ad that got the most clicks will automatically start displaying.

However, a month after this change was introduced, Google has made further amendments to the ad rotation policy giving back some control to marketers.

Marketers are given the freedom to completely opt out of the ad rotation change and Google would not stop the ad rotation unless the marketer intimates the search engine giant to do so. For opt out form, click here:

The time frame for default ad rotation has also been extended from 30 days to 90 days. Therefore if somebody wishes not to opt out then the ads would rotate for 90days facilitating more time for marketers to gauge the impact of a particular ad and determining the one to use for the long term.

This quick update to the ad rotation has been welcomed by search marketers as a change in the right direction.

Impact: For PPC marketers, this is deemed as a welcome change as better performing ads would be displayed (bingo!). But the negative point was the 30-day restriction. The time-frame to test the effectiveness of an ad was small and therefore drawing any specific conclusion on what runs best in terms of CTR and conversion was difficult.

More importantly, the decision power was in the hands of Google on what ads to display. Online marketers were losing their control . However, the subsequent update is certain to have reduced marketers’ angst.

4. Improved Keyword Tool & Traffic Estimator

When: April 25, 2012

Change: To make campaign building process easier, Google announced improvements to the Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator.

Changes in Keyword Tool: Now, marketers can get keyword ideas grouped on the basis of themes. The updated keyword tool lets you quickly view the suggested new ad group themes and add those to your account directly. In addition, the traffic estimator integration facilitates easy view of the data for your keywords and equips you to take campaign strategy decisions faster.

Changes in Traffic Estimator: The new additions let marketers graph performance estimates, draft ad groups and add them to AdWords account.

Impact: The changes are very positive light for online marketers as they allow effective bidding and budgeting of the campaign and provide a good view of potential traffic

For detailed info, click here:

To stay updated on the recent development in AdWords, bookmark this blog:http://adwords.blogspot.in/

This article was originally published on the Online Marketing Thoughts blog.

According to results from an Advertising Age survey, while users (US users, mind you) were more favourable to ads in magazines, newspapers, TV and out-of-home, they had extremely strong dislike for advertising on mobile phones, e-mail, social networks, and even websites. E-mail and mobile phone advertising had the strongest ‘dislike’ factor among users surveyed. We suspect it is because of the perceived intrusiveness of advertising in these media.

Focus on informative and relevant ads
What does this mean for digital marketers? Well, as a study by Yahoo! and The Nielsen company shows, focus on creating ads being more informative and relevant to users rather than graphical and multimedia aspects. Another suggestion is to pay closer attention to ad formats and placements.

There are three main problems I have encountered:

a) Different publishers use different web analytics tools, and hence there is no common benchmark.

b) Publishers report different metrics in their media packs: for example, some highlight unique visitors, some talk about visits while some rave about their page views. Occasionally I stumble upon some publishers – admittedly not very large ones- who still talk about hits!

c) In most cases, we have to rely on the publisher’s word in the absence of independent 3rd-party audits of these online metrics (the number of publishers who get their traffic numbers audited or are willing to share more in-depth reports from their analytics is quite small).

You can get relevant metrics from providers like Comscore, Nielsen or Hitwise; however, you’ll need to have fairly deep pockets for that. I’m not very sure of the accuracy of the numbers either.

So, instead, let’s look at alternatives- which are either free or can be relatively cheaper to get a fair estimate of the potential traffic to the online media channel you are considering for your advertising campaign.

a) Use Google Ad Planner: I have used several free online sources to compare traffic to websites: Alexa, Compete, Quantcast to name a few, but either the information one got back wasn’t very useful or there seemed to be serious issues of accuracy, particularly with services like Compete and Quantcast which are quite US-centric.

Amongst the tools/ sources I have used, I found Ad Planner to be the most useful and reliable. In a test case done recently, traffic estimates provided by Ad Planner closely matched actual traffic numbers shown by Google Analytics. Granted that there were significant variations in some months; however, upon taking the average of metrics provided over a seven-month period, the variation was less than the acceptable 5-10% range. Ad Planner gives information such as unique visitors, visits, page views, time spent per visit; if you are looking to run an international campaign, you could get the data from specific countries as well.

Note, however, that data is not available for all websites. This is most likely for sites that fall below a certain traffic threshold, though the threshold itself is not very high as I have seen data for sites with less than 15000 visitors per month. It could also be that some sites have opted-out of having numbers reported by Ad Planner (I haven’t verified that such an option is available).

b) Use “managed placements” in the Google Adwords network: This might involve running a trial campaign using Google Adwords to get some reasonable pointers to traffic you can expect from a site. You could, of course, go through the process of setting up a ‘managed placements’ campaign without actually running the campaign, which will give you estimated impressions on some of the sites that you are targeting. However I find the range to be too large and therefore, I would only use that as a starting point to finalizing the sites I really want to target as part of the campaign. I’d suggest shortlisting sites based on the range provided, and then run a pilot campaign targeting those sites to get a more accurate idea of the traffic that the sites attract to firm up your media plan.

Are there any other reliable third-party tools- free or inexpensive- that you can use for either media planning purposes or competitive analysis? Share your thoughts and/or experiences with such tools.

- Manoj Aravindakshan

Manoj is a Singapore based SEO & online marketing consultant and Director of On Target Media.