Pay Per Click (PPC)-Why You Should Care?
If you aren’t actively marketing for local search prospects, you are missing out big time.
With close to 300 million searches per day, there is no denying that people use search engines. But do they use them when looking for local products and services?
There is an abundance of public data suggesting that as high as 80% of potential prospects turn to the internet first when looking for a local product or service.
The yellow pages are a thing of the past. The new yellow pages are local internet directories and a new medium called Pay Per Click advertising. If you don’t believe me ask yourself when was the last time you picked up your local yellow pages to find a vendor or to do research.
I know it, Google knows it (the majority of their stock price is a reflection of their anticipated growth from advertising) and if you resist it, there is a good chance your business may a thing of the past too. Microsoft knows it too, for this very reason; Microsoft is attempting to purchase Yahoo.
WHY USE PAY PER CLICK (PPC)
There are many reasons why, as a small business owner, you should consider allocating part of your marketing budget to local search marketing strategies, here are just a few:
- Highly Targeted-Unlike direct marketing and other forms of advertising your ad will only be served (appear) when a prospect is actively searching for your type of business (typed into your pre-selected “keywords”)
- Tracking-there is an old marketing adage that says “I know I am wasting 50% of my marketing budget, but I don’t know which half”. You can’t improve what you can’t measure and Pay Per Click advertising is very easy to measure. With search engine marketing (SEM), you are able to track every aspect of your campaign-keywords, Ad groups, Ads ect. All four major search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN, ASK provide a piece of script that you can put on your websites that give you very important visitor information (that will be covered in an upcoming article), all available in report form.
- Testing-You can quickly and easily run A/B testing for both Ads (to drive leads) and different landing pages (to convert prospects).
- Performance based-It is the only advertising available that you only get charged if a prospect actually takes action (clicks on your ad). This actually is a second form of qualifying. The prospect not only is actively searching for your type of business, but actually liked your ad enough to click on it.
HOW IT WORKS
- Choose your search engine to advertise on. Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com account for 90% of all searches. Each search engine has different demographics for their typical users, so do some research.
- Choose your keywords and key search phrases. In other words, when do you want your ad to appear? For example: if you were to look for an accountant in your area, what would be your search phrase? “Las Vegas accountant”, “cpa in las vegas”, “irs audit cpa las vegas”.
- Choose a monthly Pay Per Click (PPC) budget. Many of the pay per click search engines allow you to manage budgets based on a set dollar amount or by daily or monthly limitations. Choose the PPC budget management tool which best suits your needs.
A word of caution before you run off and start pouring money into your PPC campaigns. Though, there is no denying that, when executed correctly, PPC can be a leading sales driver and profit builder, it can also drain your marketing budget if you aren’t careful.
Read and study as much as you can about Pay Per click and how it works. I would also recommend you start out small and learn what works and what doesn’t and then scale up your budget when you begin to get the hang of it. Be prepared though, Yahoo! anticipates the average advertiser spends nearly 17 hours per month managing their accounts. And that’s just Yahoo!. Add to that Google, MSN and Ask.com and it can quickly become a full time job.
If you believe that Pay Per Click can benefit your company but you don’t have the time, energy or desire to tackle this project on your own, there are many companies that will manage your search campaigns for you- my company being one of them. For more information on how to attract more clients using Pay Per Click (PPC) go to www.stickymarketingsystems.com
Ten Website Conversion Tips
From my work, I notice a lot of businesses think that throwing money at advertising is what they need to get more customers. Sure it’ll help, but why waste your money when you can convert more leads for less cash? Out of the research I’ve done and my own experience, here are a few checkpoints that I work through to increase website conversion:
1. Be clear about what you do
If visitors don’t see your site as being relevant to them – they can leave in 3 seconds. So make sure you’re clear about what you do. Use strong headings in your content, add relevant photos and make use of dot points to cut through the clutter. A good copywriter can help achieve this through brevity. This will help keep visitors on your site, but only if you…
2. Receive Targeted Traffic
You have to be attracting the right sort of person to your site. For example, if you’re selling web hosting, you need to think about the sort of customer you want to attract. Where will you advertise? How is the performance of different keywords in your PPC campaigns? Is your ad copy over-promising? Make sure all of this is congruent with the sort of customer you’d like to attract and you’ll increase your conversion rate dramatically.
3. Direct Traffic to the Right Landing Page
So many businesses direct their ads and search marketing efforts at their homepage. If you have a lot of information and pages on your site, this can be really detrimental to conversion. Research shows, that if someone cannot find what they’re looking for on your site within 3 page views, you’ve lost them. Also, if you’re running AdWords on your site, a specialized landing page optimized for certain keywords will help you pay less.
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Brand Values In A Recession
I recently attending a breakfast discussion at the Odette School of Business at the University of Windsor. It was facilitated by Dr. Fritz Rieger. The subject being discussed was how to anticipate the outcome of two companies joining forces, through Acculturation – a model of cultural adaption.
He essentially outlines four directions the corporate cultures would go. First of all they would either assimilate completely into the new culture or the opposite, separate themselves and the stronger entity would continue their home culture. The other two directions are the softening of the model and probably the more desirable positions. They are that the companies would integrate and benefit from their mutual contributions or they would de-culture and assume an entirely different model unique to either side.
Dr. Rieger then gave real-world examples of this and their outcomes and where they fit into the diagram. His best model was the American company Chrysler and the German company Daimler. Each company has a traditional cultural difference. It was a great example for his model. A question from those assembled intrigued me. It was asked,” Where might a company typically fall into the model, when their motivation to partner is desperation due to a down-market?” – the key word (to me) here was “motivation”.
When desperation is the motivator, how clear is a company in making rational decisions that may in the long term be detrimental? There may be some immediate return in moral support (strength in numbers) but what is the potential damage to your brand, if you are even able to maintain your brand or will it be absorbed into the other partner’s culture? The Dr.’s acculturation model is a good one if one is considering a move to partner but maybe hasn’t thought through the possible brand impact due to differing corporate cultures. The model nicely takes into account egos and maturity.
If your brand is a strong one, but numbers have slipped across the board due to the economy, many companies in their war rooms entertain many solutions. If partnering is considered – the fit is naturally one consideration. Invariably one of the candidates will be the stronger company with the deepest pockets, but lets say that this company has actually the weaker brand at this point in time. Which brand will rise to the surface in the partnering? If both parties can put aside egos, would the resulting corporate make-up see an opportunity in attempting to grow the stronger brand as opposed to the one of the richer company, which may actually be the weaker brand. Would they recognize that the stronger brand has a better chance of returning bigger profits in the long run and benefit more from the combined strengths of the partnering or would the relationship implode?
I contacted Dr. Rieger and shared my thoughts with him. He proposes the following scenario would probably happen based on his research:
“At the end of the day, the stronger (takeover) partner (with the deepest pockets) will be the one to decide how the “acculturation” will take place. If the stronger partner believes that adopting the brand of the weaker has commercial value, then it may indeed choose to adopt that brand name and identity. However, in much the same way that the incoming settlers may choose to “go native” in order to survive in a new land, over time, the conquering settler will seek to modify the “native” culture to better fit their own customs. Often the only aspects that survive of the native culture, or brand, are the external commercial trappings and everything else (management) reflects the takeover partner. Over time, there will be little left of the stronger brand, since all of the “culture” that supported that brand has been stripped away.
A good example is the Sears takeover of Eaton’s (in Canada). Eaton had the stronger brand and Sears kept the name in hopes of retaining the customer base but ran it much like Sears. Customers noticed the difference and the customer base shifted. After a while, even the name was abandoned and takeover Sears became Sears in name as well.
While it is possible to “assimilate” in one aspect, to remain “separate” in another, it is really quite difficult. The result doesn’t last because cultures (and companies) are holistic. Management affects operations affects morale. ”
So, in the world of corporate branding, Dr. Rieger’s scenario adopted the brand image but NOT the brand values. They maintained their own values, which of course would work against the company with the stronger brand recognition. That brand being built on “their specific values”. Without those unique brand values the conquerer fails because a brand is the sum of it’s many elements. (Values are not interchangeable)
When I discuss branding with companies, one key element in our discussions are the company brand values. It is commonly understood and agreed that with out them the company would cease to exist. They are the foundation of the company. So then Eaton’s had to fail. Sears were not prepared to just be a silent partner, and the customers were not prepared to accept the altered brand – it was not what they had grown to love. Once you change the brand values the customer loves, the brand withers. This betrayal of values is what Starbucks is going through this very moment – they moved away from the customer which was the core of their brand values – the customer moved on – now they are back-pedalling as fast as they can.
Branding Your Business Through SEO
Here is an interview I did recently with with Joe Balestrino of www.MR-SEO.com:
Kevin: How did you come up with MR-SEO.com?
Joe: I had just started my small business, focused on search engine optimization and knew I wanted to come up with a name that would be memorable and would help me brand my business. As a small web-based business, it is important to choose a name that has to do with your industry and will count in search terms. I liked MR-SEO.com but when I typed it into the search engines a bunch of guys were coming up that had nothing to do with my business. I knew I wanted that name and had to think of a way to capture people based on my spelling of MR-SEO. To make it happen I had to work constantly on getting other sites to link to me.
Kevin: Why is link-building so important?
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How To Guarantee Showing Up In Google
You might recall the article by Kevin recently where he asked should we brand our company or oursleves.
Personally I encourage my clients to build three distinctive but interconnected brands:
- their corporate brand
- their employer brand
- their personal brand
As you are thinking of naming your company, it is critical to consider the vision of success for the business. For example, is this a business that you will want to build and dispose of; or is this a business you want to create as a legacy company and see generations of your family leading in years to come? The answers to these questions can also guide you as to whether to name your company with a name that is connected to your own name.
Naming your business is almost as challenging as naming your children – especially if like me you are parents of multiples. (I have twins and we didn’t know what sex they were going to be before they were born so that was double headache for us to come up with both boys names and girls names and permutations of each!).
However as a leader of a business it is important to ensure that we too are able to be found online. You see over 35% of people will search for us by our own name online before they make contact with us or meet us.
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This Guy Is Responsible For My Small Business Having A Number One Google Ranking
Many years ago I launched my first serious small business, BetterEdit.com. For the first few years it was a tough hard slog to get new clients. My marketing was okay, but it was very labor intensive since it focused on placing posters at university campuses to promote the editing service. If I didn’t put up posters then I didn’t attract new clients.
During 2004 and 2005 I spent a lot of time researching about Internet marketing. I realized the potential for the web to deliver new clients to my business but I hadn’t optimized my website. As a result if someone searched for my top keywords in Google my website would be listed on the second or third PAGE, and if you want people to come to your site as a result of a search you have to be on the first page, preferably in the first, second or third position overall.
Eventually I stumbled across a guy named Brad Fallon who had a course back then called “stomping the search engines“. I took the course, went back to my website and began implementing the techniques I had learnt, like adding a site map, optimizing my title tags and building links to my website.
The immediate impact was not significant, but eventually my site started to rise in the search engine rankings. Eventually I made it to page one on Google for nearly every keyword phrase I targeted.
Shortly after that something amazing started to happen. New customers were submitting jobs who had found my website via search engines. These customers cost me nothing to acquire AND they kept coming without me needing to do any extra work.
Today I have Google rankings of either number one, two or three for the phrases I target, which means if a person searches for something that my business offers, for example “thesis editing“, potential customers find my business as a top ranked result.
The end result has been a steady stream of clients over the past two years whether I put out posters or not. The business turns over over $100,000 a year now in revenue and most of that comes from clients acquired from search engines directly or via word of mouth from people who originally found the business via search and told friends.
In short, a well optimized website can do amazing things for your small business, and it’s worth spending the time on professional training to improve your Internet marketing.
How Would You Like Internet Marketing Training From The Best?
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Marketing With Blog Directories – BlogCatalog.com Review
Blogging, it’s all the rage these days. If you know me, you know I love blogs and I love blogging. A good chunk of my living is made from blogs and blogging and I constantly recommend them as a means to market your business and develop a personal brand (see Small Business Branding – It’s Not “Weâ€, It’s “Me†for details).
Today the folks behind BlogCatalog.com contacted me for a sponsored review here at Small Business Branding, so I’m going to give you my opinion of using a blog directory like BlogCatalog as a means to market your blog.
Directories Generally Suck
I’m going to start with the harsh truth – I’ve never been a fan of directories. I find them next to useless for search engine optimization purposes, although many people will tell you to use directories to build some easy incoming links. The direct traffic you get from directories is often minimal and in my experience isn’t worth the time it takes to submit your entry – you are better off writing an article or producing some form of content.
That being said, there are a few top directories – authority sites – that are worth paying attention to. BlogCatalog is definitely the highest ranking blog specific directory I could find, so you if you do choose to spend a few minutes of your marketing time using directories and you have a blog, this catalog is a top choice.
Not For Search Engine Optimization
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