Is search marketing a worthwhile cost initiative for your business?  How can one know for sure without the experience of having done it before?  Is paid search a good use of my interactive marketing budget?

In an effort to be the most transparent e-commerce consulting business in the world, we’d like to share some real world examples of some of our recent clients.  We work with a medium-sized retail company that generates just under $100 million / year in online revenue.  They are one of our outstanding retainer based clients (they pay us as if we work directly for them, on a monthly basis) and we’ve been working with them for about a year now.  Being a retainer client, they could choose to terminate their relationship with us at any time (giving a 30 day notice).  We’ve transitioned a great deal of SEO knowledge to their staff and we manage their pay per click budget for them each month, an ad spend initially of around $25k/month. They show no signs of leaving our partnership, and for good reason.

Even though we provide them with the equivalent of 2 full time employees each month, at a consolidated rate of around $100/hour each, they are paying less now than they were before they selected us as their partner.  They have found that they are getting a return on investment of around $9 for every dollar they’ve spent with us.  We have great analytics to show in detail how this has been accomplished, but a large reason for it is that we’ve optimized their site for improved conversion, meaning that a higher frequency of customers are buying than were before.  Also, we’ve worked on improving their search engine optimization efforts and they are now generating nearly 40% more traffic than they were just six months ago. And since our studies have shown that natural/organic search results are clicked approximately 900% more frequently than paid search results, we’ve been able to reduce their monthly ad spend from $25k/month to around $4k/month - all while increasing traffic and conversion rates on their site.  We don’t take a portion of the ad spend like many firms do.  If we did, there would be very little incentive for us or any firm to want to reduce your monthly spend.  Instead, we charge for our time.  And with our time, we find ways to make your e-commerce business run more efficiently.  We expect to continue providing a 9 to 1 ROI ratio, and this number is typical of many of our clients.  Obviously, it depends on your site’s industry and products.  

Regardless of your industry though, we routinely do work that pays for itself very quickly and starts generating additional revenue for the client shortly thereafter.  This is why we often recommend working with contracts that include a base rate plus % of year over year increased in revenue.  We find it extremely exciting to be a true partner in your business, and this is a way that allows us to share in the success we bring to your site.  We are a different kind of IT company.  We love to compete.  After all, that’s what search marketing is - a competition. And we compete to win, regardless of who our competitors are.