Internet Marketing Tips, Tools and Strategies

Earlier this week, eMarketer published an article that reaffirmed what WSI is always telling our clients - even in a poor economy, you have to invest in your online marketing spending to make money. In fact, for a lot of businesses, increasing your business spending or reallocating marketing dollars into cheaper and more effective (read: online) media during a downturn can help you come out on top as the economy picks up.

The eMarketer article goes on to discuss the correlation between businesses that are continuing to succeed and greater marketing spending. The bottom line: "Almost two-thirds of small businesses that expected increased revenues had raised or planned to raise marketing spending, compared with just 32% to 36% of businesses with flat or declining revenues." Additionally, "the survey showed small businesses shifting marketing initiatives toward cheaper digital media and away from traditional channels. The top three marketing tools used were social media, e-mail newsletters and search."

Contact us today to find out how WSI can help your business leverage these three (and other) marketing tools to maximize the effectiveness of your business spending. You may think you can't afford to increase business spending or increasing online marketing spending right now, but the truth is you can't afford not to if you want to survive and thrive in the current economy.

We encourage you to read the eMarketer article in its entirety here. 

Yes. Does that mean you should? Probably not. And here's why - if you're like most small to medium sized business owners, you most likely already wear a lot of hats within your organization. You may already feel like you do not have enough time in a day to complete everything on your "to-do" list, and if so how much time are you really able to dedicate to managing your pay per click campaign? Unless you are able to spend a couple of hours per day (yes, per day) you may be wasting your clicks.

When pay per click marketing first came out, it was easy for small and medium sized business owners to set up a pay per click campaign, choose a few keywords, and let it run for the month. But as internet marketing practices become more specialized, pay per click becomes more competitive and requires constant attention. How much time are you willing and able to devote to pay per click management? Consider this -

- How much is your time worth, or how much would you have to spend to hire someone in-house? Conservatively, let's say that amount is $50/hr.
- You should spend a minimum of 5-10 hours per week on your PPC campaign, checking keyword performance and ads, which is $250 per week or $13,000 per year! And that's on the low end.
- WSI is working with a $2+ million pay per click management tool that enables us to have access to the latest and greatest in PPC technology far above and beyond a basic Google Adwords account. And we are able to track multiple conversion points (Call Tracking, Email Tracking, Web Form Tracking, Sales, Email Marketing Sign-ups, and a multitude of Web Events). We also optimize our campaigns around the keywords that lead to "conversions." Google Adwords tool can only track conversions from Web Forms and Sales, which means you are probably missing out on tracking 60% of your conversions.

We understand that in current economic times, small and medium sized business owners are looking to shrink their marketing budgets, increase their ROI or both. And while it may be tempting to tackle some of your internet marketing campaigns in house, keep in mind that you get what you pay for. WSI guarantees that we will get you better PPC results than if you manage your campaign yourself. Contact us today to find out how.