Archive for the ‘Paid Search’ Category
Social Media is Sexy
By “sexy” I mean alluring and enticing. And Social Media is just that for marketers.
- It’s immediately accessible.
- It can give you instant feedback.
- It enables you to touch your customers individually.
- Public usage is growing like wildfire.
- It’s fun!
In the past year I have attended countless workshops, seminars, and programs to educate myself on how I can help my clients use Social Media effectively to reach their goals. I have set-up profiles and pages, developed campaigns, and coached my clients on blogging, using Facebook Fan Pages, LinkedIn and Twitter. And we are seeing good results (even my dentist is getting new patients from his Social Media effort!).
But…last week one of my clients told me that he was encouraged by a friend in marketing to discontinue his Paid ads on the Search Engines (which have been responsible for a huge increase in his revenues) in favor of Social Media marketing. Hang on a minute there!
Paid Search is still the only guaranteed way for many types of businesses to be in front of their target market on Search Engines. Yes, Social Media can increase your company’s Internet footprint, but it can’t substitute for Paid Search for:
- Having control over where your message appears.
- Having control over when your message appears.
- Being where your competitors are (remember, your brand can be used as a search term).
- Reaching the most targeted ready-to-buy customers.
Social Media IS sexy. So, my advice is: incorporate Social Media into your marketing plans, but take a deep breath and think about what’s working now before you throw away the baby with the bathwater.
Your thoughts?
Tags: Internet Marketing, Managing Time Social Media, Paid Search
Posted in Internet Marketing, Marketing, Paid Search, Social Media | 2 Comments »
December 14th, 2009
Who answers the phone when someone calls your business? Do you have an automated attendant or do you have a “live” person handing calls? If yours is like most businesses these days, you probably use an automated attendant. An auto attendant can certainly save money on payroll, but do you know how it’s affecting your bottom line?
I have always paid a lot of attention to how my service clients’ incoming calls are handled. After all, if I have set up an advertising campaign for them I want to be sure that every lead that is generated from that campaign are accounted for. I’m lucky because I when I set up Pay Per Click campaigns, I include with a free service that enables my clients to see what incoming leads are generated and listen to a recording of each call.
Recently, I performed a very unscientific experiment to see I could discern a connection between how incoming calls are handled and overall conversions. I discovered that auto attendants get significantly more hang-ups than when a live person picks up the phone. In addition, I discovered that most auto attendant systems seem to have at least one, if not all, of the following issues:
- Too many rings before extension pick up (the most hang-ups here)
- Long delays connecting to extensions (leads to customer frustration)
- Confusing employee directories (totally frustrating)
- Outdated information in the recording (such as services provided)
- The sales department is the last option in the extension list (should be the first!)
Try phoning your own company as if you are a first time caller. What’s your experience? If it’s less than stellar, do something about it fast. Now’s not the time to let any incoming leads go.
Remember, the sales process begins at “Hello” and it’s the first step in to getting to “Yes!”
Tags: Incoming Leads, pay per click, Sales
Posted in Local Business, Paid Search, Sales | 2 Comments »
October 6th, 2009
If you’re a business owner, it’s likely that you want the world to know that you are the best at what you do. You know that your competitors are using Google to market their services, but would it work for you?
The answer is: maybe. The secret is: you can test it very quickly and economically.
Using Google to test your online market is something that businesspeople are doing all the time. A test program can give you the data you need to decide if its worth a larger investment.
For example:
Do you want to know if your target market actually uses the Web to find your services? Run a test program for 2-3 months…and then analyze the results. Even if you want to reach the entire country, identifying two or three local test markets will give you the information you need to make future decisions. How many visitors did your site get? Did they turn into customers? What’s the return on investment?
Whether you have a small business or work for a large corporation, the concept is the same. Test, analyze and then act based upon what is working. Now you are in control of how you spend your advertising dollars!
Tags: Google advertising, Internet Advertising, Internet Marketing
Posted in Internet Marketing, Paid Search | No Comments »
February 10th, 2009
The beauty of paid search is that it can be adjusted so fast and so easily that I can help my clients respond to whatever is happening in their business. Here is an example of why it is so important to “Be There” when people are looking for your business’s services on the web.
I received an email from one of my clients two weeks ago asking to shut off his paid search campaign for a while. He said that his company was looking to cut-back on some of their expenses and felt that they had more business than they could handle for the time being. (A classic example of my having done my job too well!) After some discussion, we agreed that it wasn’t a good idea to shut his program off completely, so we lowered the budget by 1/2 and eliminated some business categories.
Yesterday, I received an email from him with the subject line: “Help!”. Turns out that his call volume has gone down significantly. We agreed to move the budget back up to the original level and re-launch in the ad groups we had eliminated.
My client has discovered that “Being There” is important, even when business is booming. His intelligently run and managed paid search program enables me to keep him there and keeps his phone ringing.
Tags: Paid Search, pay per click, search engine marketing, SEM
Posted in Paid Search | No Comments »
November 18th, 2008
