Getting Merchants to Click

From search engines to social media, online competition has heated up for ISOs and acquirers. What does it take to stay ahead of the pack?

If acronyms and terms like SEO, PPC, unique clicks, likes, and tweets sound unfamiliar, the latest digital-marketing efforts used by independent sales organizations and acquirers may be passing you by.

Equivalent in some ways to direct mail—or simply walking down the sidewalk and knocking on doors—these digital-marketing efforts can be effective in getting merchants to notice your company, at least the online version.

Digital marketing might include such tactics as paid search results that appear as ads on search-engine result pages, search-engine optimization to aid a company’s unpaid search placement, social-media posting and campaigns, ad placement on Web sites. and blogging.

Putting digital-marketing services to use can ensure a payment-services company’s marketing messages show up where merchants are looking online, whether that’s on a search-results page, social media, or while visiting another Web site.

Competition includes not only other ISOs and acquirers, but companies like Stripe Inc., Square Inc., Intuit Inc., Groupon Inc., and Amazon.com Inc., each offering some variant of merchant-processing services or equipment and using the Internet as a primary distribution channel.

Only 7% of ISOs bid on keywords that could produce leads, found “How To Acquire Merchants Online,” a study released in 2014 by Adil Consulting, an Omaha, Neb.-based payments-advisory firm.

Only 27% of them bid on product-related keywords, “whereas 72% and 89% of POS software companies bid respectively on these types of keywords,” writes Adil Moussa, principal at Adil Consulting, in the report. “The difference in this focus is the biggest clue as to why POS software companies dominate Internet marketing.”

A Delicate Balance

Competition is a familiar theme within the payments industry. “It’s very competitive in our industry, especially with payment processors and gateways,” says Kristen Gramigna, chief marketing officer at BluePay Processing Inc., a Naperville, Ill.-based ISO.

Indeed, many of these competitors have more money to put into their digital-marketing efforts, which means ISOs and acquirers have to be smarter.

“At BluePay, that means using multiple methods, such as search-engine optimization, paid search, or pay per click and social-media posting,” Gramigna says. The complexity of managing all of that prompted BluePay to hire a third-party company, Straight North LLC of Downers Grove, Ill., to help with search-engine optimization, also known as SEO, and other tasks.

SEO is used to get traffic to a Web site via natural or organic searches. It takes into account how search engines work and what keywords a merchant might use to find the content.

For example, a salon owner might search for “salon” and “credit card” to find a new merchant-services provider. On a Google search-engine results page, that search might produce three paid search results—labeled as ads by Google—placed at the top of the page, followed by a list of organic, or unpaid, search results.

For many digital marketers, landing their content on page 1 of a search-engine results page is the only result worth tabulating when measuring their SEO efforts. The difficulty with SEO is that everyone is competing for that placement.

“SEO is a lot less expensive than [pay-per-click marketing],” says Gra­migna. “But in order for search engines to give you credit and give your site relevance, you need to have a balance between SEO and PPC, which is a way to obtain instant results with the search engines for relevant keywords.”

If an advertiser is willing to outbid other advertisers for keywords, a pay-per-click, or PPC, ad will show up immediately, she says. With SEO, results could take weeks to show up, Gramigna says. “You can’t expect to make changes to your site and come up on page one on a search-engine results page immediately,” she says.

SEO management also requires paying attention to changes that search engines make to their algorithms. Google, for example, has implemented the so-called Penguin and Panda updates that refine what Google thinks are important to users of its search services.

Google, like other search engines, does not disclose details of its search-engine formula. Instead, the search industry, including the company that helps BluePay with its SEO, ferrets out the mechanics of the update to advise clients.

“When Google changes the algorithm, we have to look at what we’re doing and figure out what changes we have to make,” says Gramigna. “That’s what I rely on Straight North for. It might take me a little longer to figure it out if I was doing it on my own.”

‘We Measure Everything’

For companies like BluePay and Cayan, the new name for Merchant Warehouse, a Boston-based ISO and payment-technology company, the ultimate goal of online marketing is to generate leads for salespeople to follow up on.

Cayan uses a variety of online-marketing programs, including pay-per-click, SEO and search-engine marketing, social media, and contributed content to generate awareness among potential customers and retain existing ones, says Jenn Reichenbacher, Cayan’s senior director of corporate and channel marketing.

Cayan also uses marketing-automation services that can expedite sending information to merchants during the sales process.

Indeed, not long after Merchant Warehouse adopted the Cayan name earlier this year, ads bearing the new brand appeared online. Some of these ads were part of the company’s retargeting campaign.

Retargeting ads appear on Web sites via ad networks that follow where online searchers go. For example, after viewing the Cayan Web site, a merchant might visit an automotive enthusiast site, but see an ad for Cayan.

“For Cayan, technology is a complement to our sales organization,” Reichenbacher says. “We rely on technology to help drive sales leads for sales and also streamline the role of the salesperson. This allows our sales team to spend more time directly with prospects and customers, as opposed to manually sending emails or completing applications, for example.”

Developing an online lead-generation campaign can be done in a couple of ways, she says. One is demand capture and the other demand generation.

“Demand capture is about getting in front of businesses looking for your products and services,” Reichenbacher says. “They self-identify in several different ways, such as search-engine queries. Demand capture is effective and the easiest way to get started, but it is limited in scale and highly competitive, so it tends to become expensive very quickly.”

Demand capture tends to be more effective when targeting new businesses because they are actively searching, she says.

With demand generation, the merchant-services provider starts the discussion with the prospect. “The key here is to have a narrow focus,” she says. “By identifying core target segments, you can determine potential touch points with businesses and then develop messaging and a product offering that is relevant and attractive for that audience.”

Demand generation often works well with existing businesses because they are less likely to actively search for service or support unless they are unhappy, Reichenbacher says. “To reach established businesses, the key is to initiate a conversation through demand-generation strategies and digital tactics like email, content, social media, and display advertising,” she says.

Because these campaigns are done online, they are easily measured. “Data is key for measuring effectiveness of our technology-based methods for attracting and retaining merchants,” Reichenbacher says. “We measure everything from online click-through rates to a customer’s entire lifecycle with us.”

Cayan tracks data on customer acquisition as well as what’s happening with new and existing customers to uncover potential opportunities.

No Deals From Twitter

Online marketing is not restricted to big-budget companies like BluePay and Cayan. Smaller ISOs and acquirers, like Merchantech, a Tracy, Calif.-based ISO, also can make it work for them.

Merchantech employs a variety of methods to analyze the online behavior of prospective clients and attract more of them, including checking leads coming to its Web site and the content those visitors seek, as well as using social media and YouTube videos, says Sal Atta, Merchantech director of sales.

Merchantech, however, has also adopted the strategy of offering a unique product, and providing it with an online site that can generate leads. Dubbed Pear POS, the iPad-based point-of-sale system has brought in customers, Atta says.

“Most of our leads come directly from our Web site—PearPOS.com,” Atta says. “Once you have an outstanding product, word spreads quickly and customers find you easier than you can find them. Then it comes down to the training and support you provide your staff to ensure everyone is fully versed on how to nurture the leads.”

While the dedicated site for the tablet POS system is invaluable, Atta says all the online methods contribute, too. “They’re all equally important,” he says. “We’ve noticed not one component has ever been all-encompassing in attracting new clients. They seem to be attracted in waves to various technologies. Each strategy attracts its own unique wave of new clients.”

Merchantech’s approach of nurturing the online lead is essential, says Kenneth Oros, senior associate at The Strawhecker Group, an Omaha, Neb.-based payments consultancy.

“You’re not going to get a deal over Twitter,” Oros says. While social-media posts and search-engine marketing have their legitimate places, most payments professionals know that closing a deal requires paperwork and underwriting, he says.

What online-marketing efforts can do, Oros says, is help create churn, when merchants switch service providers. That churn requires ISOs and acquirers to have social-media presences, he says.

For example, a restaurateur may use an online search to find a new payment-services provider, Oros says. ISOs and acquirers that lack search-engine marketing programs might miss out on being seen by that merchant.

Or, in another example, a merchant going through a stack of sales agents’ business cards might search online to check the validity of the rep and the provider, he says. “If [the ISO or sales agent] can be there and elevate themselves in relationship to a query, they’ll probably get a phone call,” Oros says.

‘Relevant Content’

That ties into what BluePay’s Gramigna says about the utility of social media: “It’s another way to reach your audience.”

The hardest part of her job, when it comes to social media, is understanding who the audience is and identifying where they go for information.

“I try to make sure we are present where our target audience searches for information,” Gramigna says. “In this industry we have so many options they can go for payment-related data. If you can figure out where your prospects and customers are searching online, it’s where you’re going to get the best value for your online advertising budget.”

BluePay uses social media to connect with existing customers and partners and educate them, Gramigna says. BluePay’s blog also is an educational service. An entry about address verification on the blog, for example, generated a lot of hits, but probably no sales for BluePay, she says.

Digital marketing also enables a flexibility that traditional marketing materials, especially printed ones, lack. The advent of Apple Pay, along with a rise in interest in mobile payments in general, might prompt shifting more of the online-marketing budget to mobile keywords, especially if more users search for those terms, Gramigna says.

“If you don’t have mobile solutions, don’t waste your money on mobile credit card processing [keywords] just because that is the latest trend in payments with the most search volume,” she adds.

And that speaks to what consultant Moussa advises about developing a niche and pursuing merchants within that category.

“In order to be effective, ISOs and acquirers need to focus on a niche and create relevant content for that niche,” Moussa says. “For example, restaurant owners are more likely to click on an ad that promises to show them how to get more customers in their restaurant than one that promises them a POS device or low rates. Once the merchant is in the sales funnel, the account needs to be nurtured until the sale happens.”