Annual US retail spending is roughly $4 trillion according to the US Commerce Department. And while e-commerce is growing very rapidly, it remains less than 5 percent of total retail sales. Historically, most search marketers have focused almost exclusively on e-commerce sales. But a new study finds that the real impact of paid search is offline.
Six-to-One Impact in Offline Stores
Based on two years of research conducted by retail marketing firm RevTrax, the study discovered that “for every $1 of e-commerce revenue generated from paid search, marketers can expect to see approximately another $6 of in-store revenue.”
In other words, paid search has 6:1 impact on offline sales over e-commerce. Because of the challenges of tracking consumer behavior online to offline, most of this has been invisible to marketers. Only now with the rise of smartphones and other methodologies is online-to-offline tracking becoming more widely available.
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:
A paid search ad was displayed to a consumer
The paid search ad led the consumer to a printable or mobile landing page displaying a coupon with a unique barcode
The consumer redeemed the coupon inside a brick & mortar store
Each coupon was tracked back to the online search (and the keyword)
Read the full article here
Paid Search Drives $6 In Local Sales For Every $1 In Online
Paid Search Drives $6 In Local Sales For Every $1 In Online
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