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Search Engine Marketing…What’s in it for me?

As we all know, the Internet has become a big part of consumer’s lives all around the world. People are using the Internet to find, research, and buy every conceivable product and service. Indeed, some products and services are available only on the Internet. Where else do you find a polka-dotted bow tie for your cat? We’ve all heard of Amazon, Ebay, buy.com and a myriad of other sites, but large ecommerce sites are not the only ones who are benefitting. Many small and medium sized businesses that previously served a local market are able to expand nationally and even internationally, thanks to the Internet and Internet Marketing. It’s an enormous market out there and for businesses that reach out and grab a piece, there is nearly no limit to the growth potential. So you have a product or service that people want…how do they find you?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) allows businesses to show up on page one of the search engines (like Google) anytime someone searches for the things they sell or the things they do. Using a tool like Google AdWords, you can create campaigns based on a list of keywords that consumers use to find you. When consumers type one of your keywords, your text ad (or one of your ads) will show up in Google (or any number of other search engines) and you pay a small fee only when someone clicks on it. Although there are many benefits to this form of advertising, one of the main benefits is cost control. You decide how much you are willing to pay per click and how much budget you want to spend on advertising on a daily basis. You can turn the campaign off at any time, such as during holidays or even certain times of the day when your clicks are less productive. Alternatively, if you are trying to build brand awareness, views of your ad are more important rather than clicks, and you may want to pay per impression. With this type of campaign, your ad can utilize graphics for better visual impact. Whether you choose to pay per impression (CPM) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) SEM gives you total control over spend and can be very effective in driving relevant, interested prospects to your website.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) gives your business the opportunity to reach out and promote your products, services and website in a way that you control, by selecting keywords and setting a budget for your campaign. With Google AdWords, your business can run text or banner ads, and you choose whether to show these ads on the search network or on other websites that are members of Google’s Content Network. With SEM, you can evaluate performance on a real time basis, looking at the number of impressions and clicks your ads are getting. Analytical tools like Google Analytics, give you additional information about what happens beyond the click. For those people who clicked on your ad, did they visit your contact page, did they become a lead or did they buy something? Tools like these combined with daily reporting enables you to optimize your campaign on an ongoing basis and present your best ad to the best audience at the best time for the right price which with any luck, will exceed your goals. Why not give it a try?

Internet Advertising vs Print Advertising

As everyone knows, the Internet has become a huge part of most people’s everyday life. Consumers use it to research and buy products, services and everything in between. With the Internet providing a proactive, instant, rich media experience, print advertising and in some cases print in general, is having less impact. Rather than waiting for the newspaper to land on the door, many people simply go online with laptops, PDAs or Kindles to get up-to-the-minute information; in most cases, for free. Rather than digging through the Yellow Pages to find service providers, consumers can go online not only to find businesses, but to evaluate them based on their website and customer reviews. When you consider the effectiveness of the Internet experience, you have to wonder if print advertising is still worth doing.

Advertising in print can be very expensive and limited in its ability to target or track results. While subscription numbers may still be hanging on, fewer people are reading and they are spending less time reading. Consumers who see print ads are presented with a static experience. In contrast, Internet advertising is able to reach a large, highly targeted population of consumers, including the growing number of people who avoid paper. With Internet advertising, business owners can target consumers visiting sites that are relevant to his or her line of work. For example, chiropractors can present an interactive, rich media ad on medical health sites. What’s more, a good Internet service provider will be able to tell them how many times per month the ad was viewed and clicked and among those clicks what further actions the consumer took after visiting the chiropractor’s website. With this type of advertising, business owners can choose to pay per impression, if the goal of the campaign is for branding, or if the goal of the campaign is lead generation or sales, they may choose to pay per click. With all of the targeting possibilities and intelligent reporting that Internet advertising provides it often results in better results at a fraction of the price.

Internet advertising can help your business by allowing a relevant audience to easily find you and you to find them at lower cost than print. As a business owner, you decide exactly when, where, and how long you want your Internet ad to appear and exactly how much you want to spend. You can test ads against each other and get results instantly. While print advertising still gets eyeballs, the numbers are dwindling and the possibilities are limited. Internet Advertising vs. Print Advertising. Which would you rather do?

Can Blogging Really Help Grow Your Business?

You can find a blog about virtually anything on the Internet. Here’s one about dung beetle with a video of a trio fighting over a ball of dung: http://umhambi.blogspot.com/2010/03/dung-beetle-is-worlds-strongest.html. People use blogs as a way to express themselves, talk about their experiences, give people information, and share their expertise. Businesses use blogs as a way to share information and expertise about the products and services they sell. With so many blogs out there written by so many people (qualified or not), is blogging really something that can help your business? Many bloggers write whatever comes to mind and don’t base much of what they say on facts. Some use it as a way to gossip and others use it as a way to vent. How can you separate the bloggers who are really knowledgeable from the ones who write whatever pops into their head? In the broad area between fact and opinion, where would you position this blog?

The fact is, blogging really CAN help your business. A good blog starts with a plan and a system to blog relevant topics on a regular basis that convey useful, compelling and interesting information about the subject of your business. You can’t just blog …to blog. Potential customers need to be able to find your blog which can be done by making it search engine friendly, advertising it where your prospective customers are likely to be, connecting it to your website and pages on your social media networks including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Blogging can be an asset to your business if you do it right and stick to the goals. Think of an interesting or entertaining angle that sets your blog apart from the millions of others out there without being gimmicky. Give valuable, relevant information on a regular basis and people will begin to enjoy reading it, look forward to getting it and eventually, will rely on it for information in your area of expertise. With this, one goal you have will be achieved: to gain credibility and become a recognized expert and leader in your field. Blogs are an important component of a successful Internet marketing plan and integrated marketing campaign. An excellent website, the use of social media, search engine optimization, internet advertising and a relevant and interesting blog all work together to build your brand, establish you as a trusted leader, and eventually, lead to new business from a very fast growing channel: Internet Marketing.

Facebook vs. Google: Will Facebook Win?

Last week, at Facebook’s annual F8 conference in California, Facebook released a new model for Open Graph, new functionality which hopes to open more of its user activity to other sites, and may offer the ability to put recommendation or “buttons” on pieces of content across the web. With Facebook creating a “smarter Internet” and a more personalized web experience, there has been a lot of buzz about how Facebook could overtake Google. Indeed last month, Facebook took a larger share of total US Internet visits than Google for the first time. How does this bode for Google?

Facebook is making the web a more personal experience in ways that allow them to continue growing subscribers up to an incredible 400 million in 2009 from just 200 million in 2008. Being more closely tied-in to users in a personal way that Google is not gives Facebook much more information about users. Information is a powerful thing. With it, expands Facebook’s opportunities for target marketing – it’s already on their radar. The information available to Google for targeting ads through AdSense pales in comparison to the information Facebook has and will have …and the Facebook audience is bigger. If Open Graph moves forward, Facebook will be able to collect information from their users from partner websites like CNN.com and IMDb – a win-win for everyone …except Google.

Google has competed successfully with Facebook in many areas, excluding social media. Google Buzz has not been as successful as Facebook which has left the door open for Facebook to gain more users and loyalty. Could Facebook eventually take over? While both companies are innovative, Facebook has been the leader in rethinking the web experience. Can Google be the true innovator that they once were or is this the end of Google and the beginning of Facebook? One thing is for certain, it’s going to be an interesting battle that either way, the user is likely to win.

TV vs. Internet Advertising: Is TV Advertising Becoming Insignificant?

Internet advertising has been claiming a larger share of the total budget spent on advertising year after year. TV advertising spend has been dwindling in the past few years. With more rich media content available on the Internet including movies, videos and TV show episodes, as well as the increasing use of DVRs and Tivo, fewer people are spending their time in front of the TV, in favor of cruising the Internet on their computers. Not being blind to this, large advertisers are shifting budget away from TV to where more eyeballs will catch their ads: The Internet.

With this change in how consumers spend their time and get their information it begs the question, “Is TV advertising becoming insignificant?” People are spending less time watching TV and when they do, more are watching recorded shows, enabling them to fast forward through commercials, or movies on demand with no commercials. In contrast, Internet advertising, such as banner ads and search engine marketing allows advertisers to place ads in front of consumers who are in an active and attentive condition, vs. the more passive condition of TV viewers. Further, advertisers can place their ads more precisely on the Internet than TV, seeking out only those specifically relevant sites to place banner ads. For example, a doctor’s allergy practice can place ads on allergy and medical sites. Advertisers can also choose a search campaign where ads are presented only when consumers search for key terms and only pay when those consumers click on the ads. In the same example above, the allergy practice may choose to present their ad only when consumers search for “allergy relief”, “allergy doctors” or “allergy shots”. TV can’t do any of that and if the lower spend on TV advertising is any indication, smart advertisers are starting to pick up on this.

With a well thought-out and executed campaign, Internet marketing can be very effective. With analytics in place, Internet marketing can deliver proven return on investment, a metric unavailable with TV advertising. Internet advertising allows consumers to take action immediately. From any type of Internet ad, consumers are one click away from an advertiser’s website to learn more, become a lead or make a purchase. TV advertising may not be completely insignificant but with more people spending more time on the Internet, it has certainly become less effective. While TV commercials may never go away completely, if the trend continues, we will all be enjoying more TV time with fewer commercials. It will be a better experience for all …as long as we don’t lose the super bowl commercials!

Internet Marketing – Banner Ads

Advertising on the Internet has been a proven channel for large businesses for several years. Savvy small and medium sized businesses are beginning to realize the same potential, turning to the internet for building their brands, generating awareness and gaining traffic to their websites. One of the earliest forms of Internet marketing, one that is still very effective, is banner advertising. Banner ads are graphic images, either static or dynamically rotated images that are found on websites to promote other websites, businesses, products or services. Banner ads are almost always paid advertisements. Fees are based on a number of factors including the popularity of the website where they are being placed, the size of the banner, the hierarchical position and whether the ad stands alone or is rotated with other ads. Fees can be based on the number of impressions (how many times the ad is displayed), the number of clicks, or it can be a static monthly fee, regardless of ad performance.

Static ads are like print ads in that they are a single image. In contrast, dynamic ads flash a number of images that continuously loop. Dynamic ads tend to perform better than static ads because they are 1) more eye catching 2) provide more information and 3) end with a compelling call to action.

When creating a new banner ad, it’s important to first set out your budget and goals. Are you looking to build your brand, generate awareness about your company and products, or are you looking for the click? Once you have determined this, it’s best to have a professional build a banner that is true to your brand, contains creative and interesting graphics and has a compelling message. In some respects, building a good dynamic banner is not unlike building a mini TV commercial. Oh, and don’t forget to make sure your banner’s landing page delivers exactly what the banner promises, providing a little additional information, good looking graphics and a big button for next steps depending on your goals. Next, identify sites to place the banner. When evaluating sites, consider at least three key things: 1) site popularity, 2) relevance, and 3) price.

Like all Internet advertising, the most important part is tracking and analyzing results. By adding Google Analytics or other tracking codes to every banner you do, you will be able to track impressions, clicks and the all important post-click data which will tell you if someone who clicked your banner became a lead or made a purchase. Just be careful to use your data appropriately, based on campaign goals. If your goal is for branding and awareness, avoid modifying a campaign based solely on poor click performance. As with print advertising, banner advertising requires repetition and even if your campaign is not generating immediate clicks, it can be creating real value by keeping your brand name “top of mind” for when your target audience is ready to buy.

Internet Marketing

You’ve heard all the buzz about Internet Marketing but what’s all the excitement about exactly? Internet Marketing includes any kind of marketing that happens electronically, over the Internet as opposed to print, TV, radio, phone or other forms of marketing. It includes search engine marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing, or any form of advertising that is transmitted via the internet. There are many advantages to using Internet Marketing in addition to or instead of traditional forms of marketing media. The first being, that virtually all forms of Internet Marketing provide immediate tracking. You can tell right away how well your campaigns are performing and using certain web-based analytical tools, you tell right through to the lead and sale exactly which ad in which campaign triggered the result and at what cost, helping you to determine Return On Investment. Second, Internet Marketing is highly targetable. With a search campaign for example, you are not only targeting geographically and demographically, but you are showing your ad only when someone searches key words that you have determined. It is free to show your ad – you only pay when someone clicks on it. The same holds true for many other forms of Internet Marketing: paying for advertising only when someone clicks on your ad based on keywords that you determine. Being able to finely target Internet campaigns, evaluate results immediately, and take action on those results often means Internet Marketing is less expensive and more effective than other forms of marketing.

Internet marketing opens up new ways of reaching potential clients and consumers. With the use of search engine marketing, companies can reach consumers at the point they are most interested in hearing from you – when they are searching for relevant products or services. Email marketing allows businesses to contact current and potential customers directly with information that may be of interest to them and with analytics in place, tests of the list, subject line, content, offer and links are all easy. Like magazine advertising, banner ads allow businesses to generate awareness to customers on relevant websites. Unlike print, the effectiveness of banner ads can be tracked immediately in terms of impressions (how many people actually see the ad) clicks to the ad and further action that indicates the ad generated a new lead or sale.

While other forms of marketing media may still work and are not going away, Internet Marketing offers a new and often better way for marketers to reach consumers. Whether it be internet advertising, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, social media marketing or email marketing, Internet Marketing allows businesses to reach relevant and interested prospects in extremely effective ways that until recently, were not available

Social Media Marketing and Google Searches

We have been talking about how social media has become so important for businesses and it can be used to increase awareness, leads and sales. There is a new reason it’s important. Starting in February, Google started showing social media status in their search results. What does this mean for you? It means that social media is becoming integrated with search. It’s a move to integrate social media into Google search and more people are going to see and click on these updates. Where comments on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. were previously visible only by members of those sites, they are now potentially visible to millions of consumers. What does this mean for you? It means three things. 1) More people are going to become aware of social media. Activity on and membership in social sites is likely to increase. 2) With a social media marketing program in place, your business is more likely to show up. Without, your competitors may steal the show. 3) Comments about your business are now available to a much wider audience and with more people making decisions based on content from social media sites, it’s more important than ever to watch and manage what people are saying about your business.

With the change at Google, “tweets” can more easily go viral. Someone could post a facebook status (comment) about a brand, a business, an experience with a product or service and if someone searches that brand, business or product , that comment is much more likely to show up in their search results. If people are saying good things about the business, this can be beneficial. Negative comments on the other hand, can hurt.

With social media, you can’t control what people say or write about their experience with your business. There is no way to stop something bad from showing up on the social media sites. The only thing you can do is monitor what is being said about you and respond quickly and in a way that either answers the questions, solves the problem or at a minimum, diffuses the situation. When responding, address the issue, come up with possible causes and solutions in a friendly, helpful and informative way. Deal with social media issues the same way you might deal with an upset customer who is in your store with other customers circled around. Because in reality, there are many customers and potential customers on the social site circled around waiting to see how you will respond. Do not be defensive and never attack back at someone. Instead, try to work with the customer, fix their issue if possible and convert them into an advocate. With comments about how you handled a bad situation, took care of it and delivered a satisfactory or positive experience for your customer, can turn a negative into an advantage. With social media slowly making its way into mainstream, it’s more important than ever to keep an eye on comments about your business and respond to them in a timely and appropriate manner.

Social Media: What it does for businesses

Last week we talked about how there is a social media outlet for almost every business. Since social media is becoming mainstream for market leading businesses, what impact is it having and where would these businesses be without it? Organizations of all sizes from small, online-only businesses to large, brick-and-mortar businesses have moved into social media by attracting significant numbers of followers on Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In and through the blogs that they write. EXPRESS clothing store for example, is one that uses Facebook and maintains a relationship with its followers on a regular basis. They announce new products, sales, and coupons as they become available, often first to the online community. They encourage their fans and followers to comment on new products and engage other users in positive conversation about EXPRESS products.

Many small businesses use social media to make a name for themselves, establishing themselves as a leader in the field by discussing interesting and relevant topics in their field. Such organizations may use Facebook to share product updates with their fan base or new promotions such as coupons or free shipping. By sharing valuable and/or interesting information with their followers on a regular basis, their fans are staying engaged, and they stay top of mind for that time when a purchase is imminent. Such content encourages visits to the website and makes the information sharable. When fans share information, the result is new fans, new website visits (which also improves natural search rankings) and new sales. It’s all about publishing relevant, interesting and compelling content on a regular basis.

Social networking sites have opened up a new world to both big and small businesses. As we have mentioned in previous blogs, social media gives businesses access to a whole new audience …and audience which by sharing, can add additional audience. This new group of prospective customers will have regular links to the business website where they will be able to browse, learn about and buy products and services. Social media is about both communications but also gives customers a new and direct channel through which to buy. With correct links and analytics set up, and with goals established, social media impact is very trackable and should be done as part of online marketing strategy to determine if ROI or at least goals, are being met. Success can be measured in terms of growth of followers, number of website visits, leads generated and/or sales made. Social media gives businesses a whole new channel for building brand awareness, customer loyalty, leads and sales.