WSI Blog - Internet Marketing Tips and Strategies

Social media sites have changed the way consumers interact with businesses. In the past, marketers could maintain a positive spin on issues that would arise with their products or services, by using a combination of media advertising and news coverage. Only extreme, newsworthly stories got any visibility beyond a small number of people, and big companies had entire departments devoted to dealing with issues that would arise that could affect their brand. With the growth of social media sites, so has the opportunity for consumers to easily comment (positvely & negatively) about a companies products and service. These comments and posts are available to view by millions online in seconds.

Are you monitoring the chatter about your company? How are you dealing with negative reviews?

FREE Social Media Apps
Try Google Alerts or Yahoo Alerts. Two free tools that will allow you to monitor keywords relating to your business, brand, products, and people. 
Technorati - the leading blog search engine, will help you keep your finger on the pule of what's being talked about online. Lexicon
Monitter - find out what people are talking about on Twitter. Monitter provides real time monitoring of the Twittersphere.
Tweetburner or Budurl - lets you shorten and track your URL posts so you can determine where your social capital is getting the best results.

The introduction of social networking and social media has leveled the playing field (to some extent) for all businesses. I mention "to some extent" because implementing a solid social media strategy takes a lot of time and skill, those who invest the most social capital tend to get the best results. Most small business owners simply don't have the time or resources to create enough social capital to make an impact vs. the mid sized to large companies who hire full time marketers or outsource to agencies to manage their social media campaigns.

Savy companies, who are open to communicate directly with consumers, can leverage social media in their favor. Responding quickly to negative posts or complaints, in a positive way, can strengthen your relationship with your existing clients and generate new business. Consumers who post negative comments should be met with offers to resolve their issues in a polite soft tone. Avoid re-acting negatively or giving away the farm each time someone files a complaint. Need to strike a balance that works for your company that will help you resolve issues without costing you a fortune in both the bank account and brand degredation.

Pay Per Click Marketing Tips:

Here are some quick Pay Per Click Marketing tips for you to consider when managing your own campaigns.

•  Set Goals - Determine the goal of your campaign (sales, leads, brand awareness)

•  Know your audience – allows you to narrow in on keywords, ad text, landing pages to avoid potential “roadblocks” in the conversion process.

•  Less is more! – don’t try to do too much with 1 campaign. Creating multiple, highly targeted campaigns with focused ad groups and keywords that align well with ad copy and landing pages, will improve your quality score, relevancy, conversion, and squeeze more out of your PPC budgets.

•  Geo Targeting – if your business is local, have your pay per click ads only display in a 10, 15, 25 mile radius of your office or primary market. If you are on a limited budget, the smaller the radius the better.

•  Content Networks – avoid content networks until you have a good feel for your campaigns. Test content networks in small increments to see what works and what doesn’t.

•  Keywords – find niche, long tail keywords that convert and you will get more from your budget. Spending time on keyword research is vital to your success. Review your keywords on a regular basis and search for more. What might work today, might not work tomorrow. Optimize, Optimize, Optimize!

•  Landing Pages – make sure the page you are sending your traffic aligns well with the keywords and ad copy. Investing in a good landing page with a well crafted PPC campaign can produce excellent results.

•  Analytics – study your analytics data and conversion goals. You need to know what is working and what is not producing results.

•  #1 Position Isn’t Always Better– businesses are obsessed with obtaining the #1 paid ad position in the search engines. Why? They believe that being #1 will produce the best results, but this is not necessarily true. It depends on the keywords, bidding strategy, landing page, and conversion results from various placements. A #3-5 position can generate better results with a well thought out campaign with a good landing page vs. a #1 position with poor keyword to ad alignment and a below average landing page. And it will cost you a lot less! That doesn’t mean we don’t see the value in a #1 position, if we can get there by achieving a good Quality Score, and good results for a reasonable investment.

Obviously, there is a lot more to PPC than what I can provide in a blog post, and to do it well is going to take a lot of time. If you are going to manage your own campaigns, you need to stay educated and up to speed with the industry changes. There are lots of great resources online and Google even offers some good educational tools to help learn more about PPC and how to manage a campaign.

875 Million People Can’t Be Wrong!

Over the past 2 years, online shopping alone has increased to over 875 million consumers (According to Nielsen’s Global Online Survey). That’s a 40% increase in 2 years. Not to mention all those who use the internet for research and to find local business services, which accounts for nearly 80% of all US adults.

Think of all those opportunities for your business. Pay Per Click (PPC) is an effective and powerful marketing tool that allows your business to get instant exposure online. We have found that PPC marketing returns are some of the strongest in the marketing industry, and averages about the same return as search engine optimization (only 8% of marketers experienced a poor ROI according to www.eMarketer.com), but produces almost instant results.

Pay Per Click marketing allows you more control over your marketing dollars and the ability to pin point market niches more effectively than SEO. PPC is like having an ad in your local newspaper and only paying for the prospects that actually read your ad! According to www.eMarketer.com, PPC advertising will grow to a $16.950 billion dollars a year in marketing spends.

No wonder Newspapers are going out of business, television advertising is decreasing along with radio. Internet marketing is here to stay and Pay Per Click marketing is a valuable marketing tool to consider for most businesses.

Step 1: Define the Success of Your Campaign
In order to define the success of your campaign, you need to know what your goals are. Is your site solely for informational purposes & branding? A lead generation site? Are you selling products and focused on transactions? Start at the bottom of your sales funnel and work your way up to the top where a visitor/prospect first enters the funnel.

Step 2: Pinpoint Your Ideal Customer
One of the biggest mistakes most companies make is they craft their marketing campaigns and websites according to what they want to see versus finding out what your customer wants. This isn't about you. Most businesses feel compelled to tell their story to their presumed audience, which more times than not, is off the mark. It's too easy for an online visitor to leave your site and find another site that speaks to them and what they want (whats your bounce rate?).

Create an artificial persona complete wtih name, age, marital status, etc of an imaginary prospect that you feel fits the mold of the typical person you have sold to in the past. Create multiple profiles and prioritize them in order of importance. Remember, you can't be everything to everyone. Pick a niche in your industry, stick to it, and become an expert in that niche. If you pick to many ideal customer profiles, you will end up appealing to no one. Once you know who you are selling to, you can craft your message so that it appeals to them.

Step 3: Select the Right Domain
Most companies consider their home page their landing page. Sometimes this works, but most of the time it does not. Your landing page may be part of a targeted micro-site or a single page hosted separately with its own domain name. When selecting domain names, pick those that have your targeted keywords in the domain name itself (ex: chiropractorchicago.com) to improve overall Google Quality Score and conversion. Consider one or more "vanity names" targeting a specific product or service.

If your landing page is hosted on your domain (this is the best strategy for sites that have good PR scores already and have been around for awhile), build your landing page URL with your targeted keywords (ex: www.ableelectropolishing.com/electropolishing-lp.htm is a sample custom landing page we just created, "electropolishing" is their top keyword).

Step 4: Wireframing
Create a "sketch" of the page layout and start by listing all of the key components that should go on the page. Do this before you create the web copy because the space available in your layout will dictate the amount of copy that you will have to work with. Place the most important elements above the fold (the area in a browser that a visitor can see without scrolling).

Step 5: Write for the Web
People do not read the same way online that they would offline. They scan for key elements - headlines, bullet points, graphics. Within seconds, the brain will determine if this is the right page that matches what they are looking for. A page could match exactly what a person is looking for, but visually it sends the wrong signals. Make sure to pick the right graphics and design elements for your pages that go well with your web copy.

Only about 20% of your visitors will actually read the body copy, make it compelling and short (less is more). Create a strong call to action! Try matching up the call to action with the 1st headline since this is most certainly the one element on your page that most people will read.

Step 6: Test & Tweak
Schedule a regular time each week to examine how your site is peforming & converting. Use Google Analytics (fee analytics software) or hire an analytics consultant to measure the success of your campaigns and landing pages. Even after you successfully complete Steps 1-5, your work is not done. A good campaign needs revising (most campaigns). Maybe your call to action is not working, your bounce rate is too high, or the keywords you focused your campaign around are not generating any leads. Your testing and measurements should match your original goals (Lead Generation, Online Sales, Branding, Relationship Building, etc).

Sound like a lot of work? It is! But doing this the right way will squeeze more out of your marketing budgets than you can imagine.

Yes, its true that we do talk a lot about technology at WSI and how to leverage technology to run your business more effectively. But when it comes right down it, what's most important is understanding the psychology behind your custom landing pages and website architecture as a whole.

The old saying still holds true today "Advertising is the art of getting people to buy things they don't need with the money they don't have."

This statement has been around long before the internet (by a couple of decades), but most of the websites we analyze have put little thought into how to convince people to buy what you have. People rarely just stumble across a website in the sea of hundreds of millions of sites. They actively go out and search to find what they are looking for, spending their time and effort to eventually click and land on a potential match for their search. The problem is that most websites are poorly constructed and NOT designed for "conversion" or persuasion.  Most people land on the page and leave within 3-4 seconds. What a waste of your time and effort getting someone to come to your landing page, through paid search or organically, and to have them leave so quickly.

The truth is you only have 3-4 seconds to make an impact!  People aren't going to read long paragraphs, they are going to scan for what they are looking for.....location of the business (if someone is searching for a local business ie: "plumber chicago"), if the page offers the service or product that matches what they were searching for (bulleted lists, bolded text, bold headlines, short consise paragraphs), and well thought out images that grab their attention. I am still amazed at how many people are spending money on Pay Per Click marketing and driving this traffic to generic home pages or poorly designed landing pages. It doesn't make a lot of sense in this economy....makes more sense to take some of that paid search budget and invest it into a better landing page (a good custom landing page costs between $900 - $1,800 at WSI, less than a lot of our clients monthly PPC budgets).  

Developing a high quality, conversion friendly custom landing page for your pay per click marketing and organic search marketing efforts, will pay for itself in a very short period of time, generate more leads, and allow you to eventually decrease your marketing costs.
 (a modest 2% increase in conversions will result in 240 additional leads for most clients without increasing traffic, based on 12,000 annual visitors).

Social Chatter: Online Brand Reputation Monitoring & Management

WSI IMC Gary Levine
Monday, November 30, 2009 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT

Gary Levine, WSI Internet marketing consultant and expert on monitoring online branding will share his insights with business owners and marketing professionals on how companies should be listening to online chatter and conversation about their brand, product or service. In today's social media rich world how can companies leverage various tools and free services to moderate the online conversations? Find out at this webinar.

REGISTER NOW!

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Watch our latest webinar: How to get your company found on Google by Ron Rodi.

Lot's of great tips on what you need to do to compete online for leads and market share.

The internet marketing industry is constantly changing, and WSI is excited about the newest change in our services - the evolution of social media into social velocity. We have found that to effectively take advantage of everything social media has to offer, you have to take it viral. Many small and medium sized business owners don't have the time or the expertise to accomplish this. WSI's Social Velocity program does just that, creating "buzz" for your business above and beyond the basics of social media like Twitter and Facebook.

Advantages of Social Media Marketing:
•  Inexpensive implementation
•  Building loyalty
•  Increasing in marketing/PR efforts
•  Search optimization
•  Much, much more

Why It's Important to Leverage Social Media:
•  Brand awareness
•  Quality conversion
•  Customer retention and loyalty
•  Announcements of product launches
•  Much, much more

At WSI, it's our job to use technology and social networking to help you stay ahead of your competitors in internet marketing. Contact WSI today to find out more about Social Velocity and how it can work for you.

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.