Last week our MarCom associate Carole Hodges hosted a free teleseminar where I focused on small business websites, SEO and social media marketing. Carole's latest venture is The Yes Connection at http://www.carolehodges.com where she assists business partners and individuals with their start-ups and small business decisions.
There is a lot of confusion these days about what is needed on the Internet to market new and existing websites. So our teleseminar addressed the questions that the non-techie business owner may have.
The free teleseminar is about 40 minutes long, but in the end has some really good tips and information. To listen online: go to http://www.audioacrobat.com/play/WXcl1C3s
In summary, some of the points we covered included how you should spend your marketing dollars wisely insofar as the complexity of web marketing. We answered questions including:
Does every business need a website? Are there times when an inexpensive “Website Tonight” type product from GoDaddy is an appropriate choice? If you don’t have a lot of money, is a free Blog a good starting place? How do you differentiate between the types of websites? For example: Brochure – e-commerce – Membership Site – Services (online purchase and not.) Do you NEED to be selling something online to benefit from a website? What brings traffic to a website? Why do I care about SEO – Couldn’t I just pay for clicks to my site? What are traffic statistics? What are keywords? How do I know what keywords are right for my business? How do I determine how much traffic I really want on my site? What makes people STAY on your website and look around? Why should I look for competitors on the web? What if I have BIG plans for growth... is there a way to structure my website so that I start out simple and later add product sales or a membership site? What advice do you give to someone who is starting out and does not yet have a website? What advice do you give to someone who has spent a lot of money on their website but it is not giving them the results that they want?
Showing posts with label pay-per-click. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pay-per-click. Show all posts
Monday, April 28, 2008
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Versus Pay per Click (PPC)
We had a new business opportunity this week with a medical professional client who is completely confused about search engine optimization (SEO), versus Pay per Click (PPC) advertising. And she is not the only potential new client who doesn't get it. Some of my most sophisticated professional friends are having a hard time grasping the new media tactics that we do required for getting their websites onto the first pages of Google and the search engines.
This gal asked about her PPC campaign, and why it isn't getting any results after three weeks... so my associate Mike spelled it out. First he did her competitive landscape, and determined that she only had three other real competitors in her geographical area. One of the three was getting 15,000 visitors per month. But they also had more than 300 pages of content on their website. Her site had very few in comparison. He researched and noted that the competitor was spending about $700 in PPC advertising. The lesser known competitor got about 570 visitors per month, and did not have a PPC campaign. Both of her competitors have press rooms which means she will need one too and they are a great place for linkable content. The more content on your site with relevant keywords the better.
If your goal is to book five clients per week initially, and then eventually in a year, you want to have ten clients per week, think about these numbers. Typically conversion rates for Internet customers are a three to five percent lead generation per visitor to your website. Out of 100 visits per site, you should get three to five leads, and out of those, one percent will buy. Basically it takes 20 leads for one customer. You need a minimum of 100 visitors per day to get business, or about 500 visitors to get a sale. It's compounded as well, so the more visitors, the better the chances for sales.
But here is the deal insofar as PPC. It's important to remember that PPC may be beneficial when launching a company and its products and services online, but ultimately PPC and offline advertising benefits will disappear as soon as you stop spending money, while SEO keeps on working long after the money is spent. We actually helped wean another client off of spending thousands on PPC ads, while increasing their SEO results. The Entertainment Connection, who offer film schools for audio engineers and radio professionals - people who want to learn how to be a DJ for instance. One of the tactics I worked on was to get their press room up and running with press releases and a press kit. Next I will be writing articles and blog content for them to provide links back to their website, while Mike will continue adding website content and track their optimization, tweaking their site for increasing their customer leads via SEO.
That said, our goal for clients is to evaluate their needs, by asking these six questions:
1) What is your URL or website address?
2) When people search for your product or service on Google, where does your website appear?
3) Do you have a tracking or measurement program for your website?
4) Who are your top five competitors (National/Regional/Local)
5) How much traffic do you think your website can get by this time next year?
6) How many customers from your website would you like per month?
For a free analysis feel free to email us - check out http://marcombroadband.com/
This gal asked about her PPC campaign, and why it isn't getting any results after three weeks... so my associate Mike spelled it out. First he did her competitive landscape, and determined that she only had three other real competitors in her geographical area. One of the three was getting 15,000 visitors per month. But they also had more than 300 pages of content on their website. Her site had very few in comparison. He researched and noted that the competitor was spending about $700 in PPC advertising. The lesser known competitor got about 570 visitors per month, and did not have a PPC campaign. Both of her competitors have press rooms which means she will need one too and they are a great place for linkable content. The more content on your site with relevant keywords the better.
If your goal is to book five clients per week initially, and then eventually in a year, you want to have ten clients per week, think about these numbers. Typically conversion rates for Internet customers are a three to five percent lead generation per visitor to your website. Out of 100 visits per site, you should get three to five leads, and out of those, one percent will buy. Basically it takes 20 leads for one customer. You need a minimum of 100 visitors per day to get business, or about 500 visitors to get a sale. It's compounded as well, so the more visitors, the better the chances for sales.
But here is the deal insofar as PPC. It's important to remember that PPC may be beneficial when launching a company and its products and services online, but ultimately PPC and offline advertising benefits will disappear as soon as you stop spending money, while SEO keeps on working long after the money is spent. We actually helped wean another client off of spending thousands on PPC ads, while increasing their SEO results. The Entertainment Connection, who offer film schools for audio engineers and radio professionals - people who want to learn how to be a DJ for instance. One of the tactics I worked on was to get their press room up and running with press releases and a press kit. Next I will be writing articles and blog content for them to provide links back to their website, while Mike will continue adding website content and track their optimization, tweaking their site for increasing their customer leads via SEO.
That said, our goal for clients is to evaluate their needs, by asking these six questions:
1) What is your URL or website address?
2) When people search for your product or service on Google, where does your website appear?
3) Do you have a tracking or measurement program for your website?
4) Who are your top five competitors (National/Regional/Local)
5) How much traffic do you think your website can get by this time next year?
6) How many customers from your website would you like per month?
For a free analysis feel free to email us - check out http://marcombroadband.com/
Monday, July 23, 2007
Pay-per-Click versus SEO and Social Media Marketing
Pay-per-click (PPC) can be an excellent way to expand your search engine awareness about products or services in an early stage company and before the SEO and social media marketing tactical results kick in. But keep in mind, as the Internet has matured, so has the cost of pay-per-click advertising. The more viewers/listeners/readers, the more it costs to reach them, so it’s important to know when and when not to use pay per click ads.
PPC is good when you need to supplement key words that are harder to optimize. As an example, the word “antivirus,” which is a popular and hard to optimize key word, could be part of a PPC campaign. The goal however, in many cases, is to raise the bar on the traditional SEO results, and eventually reduce the amount of money spent on PPC. Because if you quit paying for PPC, the visibility goes away completely, whereas if you stop doing traditional SEO, it’ll take awhile for the page results -- where you are on the first pages of the search engines -- to diminish.
PPC is also good when doing targeted regional market rollouts. I recently did an online media plan for one of MarCom Broadband's clients known as Dogtor Paco, with new mortgage payment calculator technology. I like the fact that online newspaper classified advertising in large regional markets, such as the Los Angeles Times online real estate advertising, seems to be cost effective, but the one I really like is CitiSearch because it offers a no risk pay-per-performance (PPP) model - and the fact that it offers a national scope - with ads that run on its partner channels as well.
Companies definitely need a budget for PPC. It’s a day to day tracking experience requiring a lot of time, and in our experience, measurement for results is an essential key component. Often times campaigns require “tweaking” and adjustments before they work. Measurement for results is an essential key component.
On the other hand, an excellent way to expand awareness about your products and services, and to provide link backs to your website is via article submissions, PRWeb, PR Newswire, and a number of free online wire services.
According to Arbitron, 27 million Americans have listened to a podcast, or online radio and TV which has become very popular. Early adopters in any category are going to benefit from this. I recently did a podcast tour for my healthcare client and she’s already done three interviews. The beauty is that they provide links right back to the most popular pages on their website. In fact, check out our client http://www.bigmediausa.com/ provides this service.
In the end, the more content you have on the Internet with your key words, the better chance you will have to attract communities of people searching for your topic.
PPC is good when you need to supplement key words that are harder to optimize. As an example, the word “antivirus,” which is a popular and hard to optimize key word, could be part of a PPC campaign. The goal however, in many cases, is to raise the bar on the traditional SEO results, and eventually reduce the amount of money spent on PPC. Because if you quit paying for PPC, the visibility goes away completely, whereas if you stop doing traditional SEO, it’ll take awhile for the page results -- where you are on the first pages of the search engines -- to diminish.
PPC is also good when doing targeted regional market rollouts. I recently did an online media plan for one of MarCom Broadband's clients known as Dogtor Paco, with new mortgage payment calculator technology. I like the fact that online newspaper classified advertising in large regional markets, such as the Los Angeles Times online real estate advertising, seems to be cost effective, but the one I really like is CitiSearch because it offers a no risk pay-per-performance (PPP) model - and the fact that it offers a national scope - with ads that run on its partner channels as well.
Companies definitely need a budget for PPC. It’s a day to day tracking experience requiring a lot of time, and in our experience, measurement for results is an essential key component. Often times campaigns require “tweaking” and adjustments before they work. Measurement for results is an essential key component.
On the other hand, an excellent way to expand awareness about your products and services, and to provide link backs to your website is via article submissions, PRWeb, PR Newswire, and a number of free online wire services.
According to Arbitron, 27 million Americans have listened to a podcast, or online radio and TV which has become very popular. Early adopters in any category are going to benefit from this. I recently did a podcast tour for my healthcare client and she’s already done three interviews. The beauty is that they provide links right back to the most popular pages on their website. In fact, check out our client http://www.bigmediausa.com/ provides this service.
In the end, the more content you have on the Internet with your key words, the better chance you will have to attract communities of people searching for your topic.
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