Rocky Fu’s Blog

It’s still too early to promote “integrated marketing” to most companies in Asia Pacific market when social marketing is new and still many are hesitant to search marketing. Anyhow, let me illustrate one benefit of integrated approach to online marketing from conversion perspective.

Visitor named Linda found a company called RFP’s product through natural search on Feb 8; that’s 1 visit from 1 visitor. She visited the RFP’s website again through a PPC listing on Feb 12 (1 visit, 1 visitor), 3rd time via a display banner ad (1 visit, 1 visitor), and 4th time after clicking on the link from an email (1 visit, 1 visitor).

In total, there are 4 visits and only 1 visitor (not 4 visitors) from the above scenario. I know this sounds simple to you. So, what does this mean to you? If RFP outsourced the above four online marketing channels to different vendors, it may end up paying extra dollars. Don’t get it? Let’s take the above scenario for example.

Let’s assume the following vendors:

• AAA: handles RFP’s SEO work and would be rewarded $10 for every registration referred to the website
• BBB:  runs PPC for RFP and  would be rewarded $10 for every one registration referred to the website
• CCC: takes care of RFP’s display banner advertising and would be rewarded $10 for every one registration referred to the website
• DDD: does email marketing for RFP and would be rewarded $10 for every one registration referred to the website

For the above scenario, let’s say Linda landed on the website via email and then she registered. AAA, BBB, CCC, DDD would include Linda as an visitor to claim reward from RFP. RFP checked the log and found that they did all refer this visitor. So, it paid them each $10 for the registration from Linda. However, there is only one registration from Linda who visited the website. RFP ended up paying extra $30.

It is important to have a conversion rule defined before you launch your online marketing campaigns:

• First click wins. AAA gets paid $10 while others not.
• Last click wins. DDD gets paid $10 while others not.
• Contributor wins. If equally sharing the $10, each gets $2.5.

Lesson: when you have more than one vendor handling different online marketing channels, you better deploy one tracking software and use it across all channels; besides, have a conversion rule defined and agreed by all parties.

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