A common challenge for B2B marketers is how to attribute revenue to a search program. Unlike typical direct marketing tactics, the path to B2B revenue often involves many channels, programs, stakeholders and decision makers.
There’s usually not a direct path from a specific digital touch to a sale, which can make long-term SEM programs difficult to justify with revenue contribution. This leaves search marketers with but clicks, search rankings and impressions, which rarely tell a compelling story about marketing’s contribution to revenue.
A client approached us with an interesting proposal: he wanted to demonstrate SEO’s contribution to pipeline and sales. With no direct connection between search impressions, clicks, and ultimate a sale, we had to come up with a solution that relied on statistical inference.
Our solution was to blend a few data sources:
Web traffic and conversion data from Adobe Analytics which contained a unique customer identifier on each page as well as each URL touched by that unique customer. This identifier was also passed to salesforce anytime a web conversion occurred, i.e. a form submission.
A CSV file of managed SEO terms and preferred landing page URLs from a vendor tool.
CRM data from Salesforce.com, which included a unique customer identifier along with all revenue activity. This allowed us to get a file which had a URL and the last-click revenue associated with that URL.
Google Search Console data, which allowed us to view search entrances per URL.
The basic application logic worked like this:
Map all the data sources together using the unique customer key and load into a temp working source.
Grab the top keywords, click and impression data for the URL via the Google Search Console REST API into another working source
Classify the keywords into brand, non-brand, product, and service categories using machine learning algorithms. We used TextBlob and FuzzyWuzzy python libraries for this.
Visualize and analyze the data using an analytics platorm (Tableau).
We now could drill down into each search query and see the revenue opportunities associated with it. This made it easy to identify revenue opportunities in an interactive, visual way.
Privacy in the digital era has become a hot topic. Headlines about data breaches, fake news, and even election tampering have become part of our day-to-day as we continue to consume and share content on social media sites. After many years of inaction, government entities are beginning to enact legislation to improve protections for internet users, starting with the landmark General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) passed by the EU. For marketers, understanding the impact of these new regulations can be confusing and complex.
In 2018 California adopted a series of consumer privacy regulations collectively known as the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA). These laws intend to strengthen consumer protections including but not limited to the use of data collected by internet services, including Social Media, Search Engines, Advertising technology, and internet connected devices. The CCPA will go into effect as of January 1, 2020.
While EU companies are subject to the more narrowly defined General Data Protection Requirements (GDPR) which also went into effect in 2018, the CCPA represents the strongest internet privacy law currently in place in the United States. With most internet platform providers located in California, this effectively governs consumer data protection nationwide, and affects platforms such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, as well as most programmatic advertising platforms.
With the explosion in popularity of digital media, consumer data has proliferated across a multitude of platforms and data services. Since provision of consumer data is often requisite to the usage of these platforms, consumers often are required to give access to potentially sensitive data in order to access common features such as email, or to engage with others on a social media platform.
This data is often stored, sold, packaged and distributed across first and third-parties, often for ad targeting and content personalization. Most internet service providers rely on revenue generated by selling this data to advertisers. Prior to the CCPA, little-to-no regulation exists to govern the storage, sharing, and distribution of consumer data. Additionally, it is difficult for consumers to control this data, view what data is stored, grant or revoke access to it, or trace the data through third parties.
The CCPA sets out to define clear rules on how consumer data may be stored, gives consumers the right to obtain clear visibility into data collected about them, and the right to control how that data is used for commercial purposes CCPA also defines the compliance framework for business which collect and store consumer data.
Key Provisions:
Right to know what Consumer data is being collected
Consumers must be able to request and obtain data being collected about them; companies must disclose what data they are collecting upon request.
Right to know what Consumer data is being sold, and to Whom Consumers must be able to request and obtain whether the data being collected about them is being sold; companies must disclose to whom consumer data is being sold upon request.
Right to say no to Consumer data being sold Consumers shall have the right to direct a company not to sell data being collected about them; companies shall comply upon request.
Right to Equal Service and Price Companies may not restrict or modify services based on a Consumer’s request to obtain or restrict Consumer data. Companies may not charge fees to Consumers in order to request or obtain Consumer data.
Companies may be subject to civil suit for damages, as well as fines ranging from $1,000 – $3,000 per incident.
For most companies with a typical corporate web presence, first-party Consumer data collection is limited. Most internet usage data collected on a commercial web site is anonymous and not personally-identifiable, and most companies rely on third-party data platforms such as Google Analytics to collect Consumer data, and this data is not stored with the Company. Data platforms are required to provide obvious links consumers can use to make requests for their data, as well as provide the appropriate disclaimers.
In the event a business self-hosts an application which collects first-party consumer data, the company must be in compliance with the provisions above.
The main effects being:
An easily visible link or toll-free phone number which allows Consumers to request their data or direct the company not to sell it.
Updates to the terms-of-service for the web site or application disclosing compliance with the CCPA.
Internal processes to facilitate the retrieval and response to Consumer data requests.
While many marketers may avoid negative impacts due to these new regulations, it’s critical to understand the impacts. Compliance may be simply a matter of following simple guidelines, updating legalese, and implementing common-sense data governance rules, and savvy marketers will be able to continue executing on their digital programs without risk of running against these regulations.
Matthew Lee is President of Motionstrand, a Digital Customer Experience Agency based in North San Diego County. Motionstrand works with brand, media and client partners to deliver exceptional CX for the Healthcare, Pharma, and Medical Device space.
Over the past several years, Google has increasingly devoted screen real estate on their search engine results page (SERP) to reflect a mix of Google’s ad products and auto-generated content known as rich snippets and knowledge panels. In many cases, these Google-owned content items dominate the screen, pushing organic, corporate and brand web site listings down below the fold.
The net effect of this has meant fewer clicks to brand sites, in fact in many cases, no click at all. Google users can now find the answer they are looking for in these knowledge panels, and many never need to click through to a web site. According to a SparkToro/Jumpshot survey from 2019, 50% of all searches fall into this category, and estimates for the healthcare industry are even higher.
For pharmaceutical companies trying to tightly control their brand and claims, and manage their content under regulatory scrutiny, these so-called ‘zero click’ searches represent a key opportunity to ensure that a brand and product is well-represented in what is often a high-intent digital moment.
Studies have shown that users trust the knowledge panels, click on them at higher rates, and that user experience satisfaction is high. If your brand’s goal is to be associated as an authority on a disease state, drug facts or brand information, it’s important to understand the impact and opportunity of zero-click results.
This automated content is part of Google’s Knowledge Graph, a database which uses structured data to define the context of internet data and content. It obtains this from a number of first and third party sources. This database classifies content using data structures, also known as schemas, to create complex references and relationships between all sorts of things, including a rich set of schemas for the healthcare, medical, and pharmaceutical industries. You can see an open-source library of definitions at https://www.schema.org/.
Google’s bots use this structure to classify and link data through context. Schema definitions can be inserted as XML snippets into the code of a web site, often called a ‘rich snippet’, and Google will look for them as they index the site.
There are dozens of rich snippet types out there, but specific to pharmaceutical and disease state searches, there are several key knowledge panels we want to get familiar with. Google has a huge amount of data it has obtained by indexing a large amount of medical information. Relatively few sites take advantage of schema markup and rich snippets, even as health-related searching has skyrocketed in recent months, and is anticipated to continue to grow.
Health Fact Featured Snippet Card
This smaller card essentially will appear in what is effectively the #1 page position. It is usually reserved for high volume searches on a topic. Content publishers such as WebMD often own this card. These cards generally define clear topic, category, or item.
Medical Fact Knowledge Panel:
This panel is typically displayed when a specific disease, condition or disease state term is searched. Disease state panels can be very robust, and often link to related diseases and conditions.They also often cross-reference drug fact panels. Especially for rare diseases, displaying a knowledge panel for this result should be a priority. These panels can be very robust with related facts, cross-references to other knowledge panels, and many other valuable links. Note that Google employs a staff of medical artists to illustrate these knowledge panels.
Drug Fact Knowledge Panel
This panel typically is displayed when a specific drug or brand name is searched, and will display a variety of auto-generated information about the drug, it’s indications, FDA status and much more. Getting a knowledge panel result for your brand terms is ideal. Basic panels will contain minimal information, while the more robust panel example below has related searches and cross-references other medical fact panels.
Q&A Knowledge Panel
This is the most common knowledge panel and it attempts to answer commonly searched questions. Many sites will implement Q&A rich snippets to attempt to own this space. Often you may find dosing, side effects and claims being answered through these automated Q&A snippets. Owning these results should be doable and is generally less difficult than the drug fact and disease fact knowledge panels. Rich snippets included in Q&A panels can be datatables, numbered lists, related links, and much more.
Common Knowledge Panel Sources
Google relies on a variety of first and third party data sources, favoring a mix of government agencies and commercial data portals. Ensuring that your brand and product is accurately represented with these sources is a must. You can view a complete list of sources here: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2364942?p=medical_conditions&hl=en
For many US search results, Google seems favors a smaller number of government and commercial sites, including NiH.gov, FDA, as well as media sites like WebMD, RXList and MedInfo, major universities, and Wikipedia.
How to influence Knowledge Panels
It’s not possible to directly control the content or visibility of any individual knowledge panel. However there are some relatively easy ways to improve the odds that Google will include your content over another source.
First and most important is strong fundamentals. A fast-loading, error-free site allows Google’s bot to crawl and index the site. Make sure to enable Google Search Console and Google Analytics to get rich data on search traffic and impressions. Watch out for the typical SEO gotchas like content duplication or too much content locked up in images.
Next, implement rich snippets and structured data on your site. Many CMS systems have plugin support for schema.org definitions. Q&A Rich Snippets and Featured Snippets are easy starting points, and you can adapt existing FAQ-style pages to this format. When creating new pages on the site, focus on how new content can answer patient, caregiver and HCP questions.
Audit sites where your brand, product or drug facts are listed. If necessary, reach out to these sites to ensure that the content is accurate, and when appropriate, attributed back to your official site. Wikipedia and other self-service data sets are easy, quick fixes that often can generate an instant result.
Regular, authoritative content publishing is another way to address high demand search queries and improve the chances your content will be picked up vs. a competitor.
Finally, you can directly give feedback to Google regarding the validity and accuracy of their results. Each knowledge panel renders a small feedback link which you can use to submit feedback for review by Google.
