magnify360 Blog

Without a doubt, Google has changed the way we live our lives. Whether searching for information, shopping for shoes or comparing deals on your next vacation, there is hardly a time when we don’t just Google it.

While this cultural transformation came on fast, it didn’t come by accident. Since its inception, Google has strived towards one goal and one goal only (and no, it’s not refraining from being evil) and that goal is informational relevance.

It’s this relevance that has made Google the world wide hub for information, shopping, email and all things online. However, this dominance brings with it some pretty unique challenges. How do you stay one step ahead of the marketers looking to game the system to win a lion’s share of traffic for their site? How do you prevent spammers? In general, how do they stay one step ahead and keep everyone pursuing Google’s Holy Grail of informational relevance and premium user experience?

The answer is both simple and quite complex.

Google’s constant optimization and an obsessive commitment to user experience are simple. However, the way that this is executed upon is quite complex.

At the heart of this complexity is Google’s algorithm or the way that they measure relevance. It is a semi – black box mix of information rankings, taking many items into consideration. Keyword density in relation to the search query, URL naming conventions, overall performance and too many other factors to name here, all play into how pages are served when the user queries a search.

It’s this constant pursuit of the perfect experience that has kept Google modifying this algorithm and kept marketers, almost obsessively, asking what is the next step in the progression?

In a recent release, Google is saying that now, their quality score will be calculated in real time, dynamically every time a query is made.

So, it appears that the answer would not only be HOW the quality score is calculated, but HOW OFTEN. I guess it’s only logical. As technology continues to increase, and marketers continue to increase their savvy, this is another way for Google to raise the bar.

This new shift in the process is huge. As marketers scramble to figure out Google’s newest riddle, the firms providing real-time landing page optimization and behavioral targeting will become a marketing necessity.

If you’re landing pages are not providing relevance in real-time, your quality score will decline, along with your ranking and ROI, not to mentioned that your CPC will increase.

So, while real-time optimization is definitely “web 2.0” it may soon be the standard. When looking back at how fast Google went from being a new, boutique search engine to a business and cultural cornerstone, it is easy to envision these real-time optimizers as being another mandatory tool in the web marketers arsenal.

The Aberdeen Group has published an independent report entitled Lead Prioritization and Scoring: The Path to Higher Conversions.

As an underwriter of the report, we are able to offer FREE ($399 value) downloads until July 25, 2008.

Download the Report

Aberdeen also issued a press release, which cites that, “Best-in-Class Companies Are 174% as Likely as the Industry Average to Reduce the Time It Takes to Close a Deal (as a result of lead scoring).”

Summary: This report identifies best practices in lead scoring and prioritization by analyzing the processes, capabilities, and performance of top performing organizations. The report isolates the most valuable leading scoring attributes and the strategic value is features and functions in lead management technology.

[Extracted from the Aberdeen Group, Lead Prioritization and Scoring: May 2008]

Key Takeaways: Top performing organizations demonstrated a 192% higher average lead qualification rate than all other organizations.
- Best-in-Class companies are 3.5-times more likely than all others to realize strategic value from the customizable components of their lead management technology
- Best-in-Class companies are 10-times more likely than Laggards to experience year over year improvement in pipeline thickness.

[Extracted from the Aberdeen Group, Lead Prioritization and Scoring: May 2008]

Yesterday magnify360’s ceo and founder, Olivier Chaine, spoke at DMDays, a New York conference produced by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) with specialty tracks provided by the Online Marketing Summit (OMS).  His presentation, Website Usability: Balancing the Customer Experience and Conversions was covered in a DMNews article by Ellen Keohane this morning, Improve Customers’ Online Experience and See Greater Conversions.

Here’s a summary of Olivier’s presentation at yesterday’s DMDays :

Website Usability: Balancing the Customer Experience and Conversions

With your website being the epicenter of all marketing efforts, it’s imperative to provide the best customer experience. Learn what research based best practices in usability are telling us about how to effectively provide customers with what they want – how they want it.

In this session you will learn:

• The Biggest Detractors for Users Causing Them to Leave your Site or Landing Page
• How Most Companies are Failing to Provide a Good User-Experience & Ways to Ensure You Aren’t
• How to Execute Customer Centric Campaigns & Where That Will Impact Your Campaign/Marketing Return on Investment