December 12, 2011 by claudia.smith
According to statistics from the US Commerce Department the annual spending on retail in the US is approximately $4 trillion. E-commerce has continued to prove a rapidly expanding and lucrative market, although according to the US Commerce Department e-commerce sales account for less than 5% of all retail sales in the States. However, following a two year study recently published by SEO Help organisation RevTrax, a company that connects digital media with in store sales, providing data that measures the success of online marketing when it comes to driving sales, they have found that the return on investment when it comes to paid search has a detrimental impact on sales made offline.
RevTrax provide SEO Help specialising in the integration of email marketing, paid search, social and mobile media with sales made in store; measuring the direct impact of paid search such as PPC on offline sales; something which in the past has proved hard to do or has been overlooked; the assumption being that on the whole, the affect of online paid search on direct in store sales is minimal. This however does not appear to be the case.
The two year study conducted by RevTrax has actually found that the real impact of paid search is offline: “for every $1 of e-commerce revenue generated from paid search, marketers can expect to see approximately another $6 of in-store revenue.”
With the increasing popularity of smartphones and tablets, it is becoming easier for marketers to start tracking the online-to-offline conversion of sales; according to online news site Search Engine Land, the study was conducted over a two year period, with sales tracked through coupons and unique ID’s:
“Between August 2009 and August 2011 RevTrax monitored millions of paid-search ads and consequent sales for its retail clients. To track in-store sales accurately RevTrax used landing pages with coupons and unique IDs”.
In order to effectively monitor how people use the web to obtain information, and the number of bricks and mortar sales conversions, SEO Help company RevTrax adopted the following strategy in order to measure the immeasurable:
Firstly a paid search advertisement was presented to consumers online, this ad directed the consumer to a mobile or printable landing page with coupon details or a unique barcode, which the consumer then redeemed in store. The coupons generated were later tracked back to the online search that the consumer conducted and the keyword used. The study found that for every $1 spent on search ads, $6 was made in store. On average, a paid search ad generated $15 revenue in store, with 9% clicks generating offline sales, with some retailers reporting that 26% of paid search ads generated sales in store.
According to the Chief Operating Officer of RevTrax, Seth Sarelson, one of the key findings from the study was that may clients reported: “40-50% of customers acquired via paid search were new. This shows that this isn’t just an example of existing customers searching on branded terms looking for a deal”. The report shows that the impact of SEO Help on overall sales should not be overlooked, even if the directly measurable results of PPC do not appear to be as high as marketers may have at first anticipated; their effect on offline sales should not to be underestimated.
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