Are Businesses Doom?
If you believe what you hear in the news your business is doomed because “the economy is worse than it has been since the great depression.”  My advice is not to follow this defeatist philosophy.

The Crux of the Problem
If you are not getting as many customers as you were before the economic downturn you may need to do something different.  If you sell cars, for example, there may only be ten people in your area purchasing automobiles this month when there were a hundred this month last year.  This is a problem but the answer is simple.  Instead of giving up you should go after the ten people who are buying.

Reasonable Expectations
Of course the effort and cost of getting these ten customers must yield you a reasonable profit.  This means you must first determine how much a customer is worth, and should know within a reasonable doubt that your effort will at least cost less than this.  Contact me and I will show you how to do this.  For the purpose of this article we will assume we are reasonably certain that the effort is worthwhile.

The Four Steps Revealed
Just about everyone uses the web.  We all know about search engines and e-mail marketing, and many more are familiar with terms such as social media and viral marketing.  Many, however, do not fully understand how powerful this internet tool can be.  As powerful as television, radio, newspapers, yellow pages, and the US mail is, they lack interactivity. 

The one major difference between old and new media is interactivity.  Television, for example, is not yet able to allow consumers to search for what they need; nor does it support an environment where businesses can tailor a response to the consumers.  This follow-up makes the difference in how much control you have in delivering the sale.  This is the essence of what the internet offers and is revealed in the following four steps:

1. Paid Search—at this point some of you are probably saying “is this all? I have been doing this for years.”  To this I have two responses, speed and precise targeting.  There is no better method to quickly and precisely a) target who you want, b) immediately get them to study your offer, and c) begin a back and forth dialog where the goal is to sell your product or service. Unlike other online marketing options, with paid search you can get quantifiable results in hours instead of months.

2. Search Engine Optimization—Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most inexpensive methods for maintaining a constant flow of online customers and prospects.  One mistake that is made by many search engine marketers is to target the wrong search terms.  Notice in my solution hierarchy that I included paid search first.  This is because you used what was learned from the paid search to determine how you should plan and execute your search engine marketing strategy.  Where a paid search campaign can be producing results in hours an SEO effort may take month.

3. Search Retargeting—many may not be as familiar with search retargeting as they are with paid search and search engine optimization.  Paid search and search engine optimization is the first step to a search retargeting effort.  Once prospects show interest in the product or service offered, as indicated by their click through to the site, the site visitor is profiled and the marketing message is evolved.  They are then re-engaged with the improved marketing message until they become customers.  The actual re-engagement occurs on targeted network sites that the prospect visits over the next 30 days.  The re-engagement is an effective method of keeping your offer in front of people who have previously shown an interest.

4. Opt-in E-mail Marketing—Opt-ed in e-mail marketing should not be confused with spam.  Where spam is unsolicited e-mails, opt-ed in e-mails are ones that the recipients has specifically said they want to receive.  As with search retargeting, the prospect has previously indicated interest.  This occurred as a result of their contact through paid search or search engine optimization. Based upon their interest, buying habits, demographics, and a multitude of other attributes, periodic e-mails are sent with the goal of increasing sales.  Once the list is in place the cost of a long-term e-mail marketing campaign is extremely economical.

At each step in the process customers are acquired but it is not the goal for one method to stand on its own.  If a prospect does not become a customer right away they are re-engaged a second, third, or forth time.  The long term goal is to minimize the cost associated with the acquisition of a customer. Moving from an aggressive paid search campaign to a low cost search engine optimization strategy is a means to this end.  Once the SEO effort has met the established goals, the paid search campaign is turned down but is still used to fill the gap for the SEO search terms that are not performing as well.  Finally, e-mail marketing is also used for re-engagement.  The prospect has given you their permission to send them e-mails. You leverage this by presenting them with the right combination of price and offer to turn them into customers.   E-mail is also used on existing customers to increase repeat sales.

Get Started Now!
No matter what the economic outlook, if you have a viable product or service, you can go to the head of the line for the acquisition of customers.  There may be a drop in the number of people buying your product or service.  You simple have to get to the people who are still buying.

As previously mentioned, the first step is to determine if an effort like this will yield you a reasonable profit.   All the tools are available and waiting for you.   It’s up to you to take the first step to make sure they are leveraged on your behalf.  

Contact Steve at 816-587-8880 x102 or at steve.thompson@siteedgeagency.com .

Technorati Tags: Paid Search, PPC, Analytics, Campaign Tracking,  google content network, google site targeting

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Google is making changes to the way it calculates and implements its Quality Score rules.

Currently a keyword’s Quality Score is determined by a number of factors, including the term’s click-through rate (CTR), relevance and historical performance, among others. AdWords Quality Scores influence the amount an advertiser has to pay to run the ad, as well as the position the ad will appear in.

The before and after of the Quality Score changes are:

• Previously, advertisers would see a rating of “poor,” “OK,” or “great.” However in the coming weeks, that will shift to a 10-point system, with one signaling an ad of the poorest quality, and 10 the highest quality. 

“Before, you didn’t have much visibility into the score itself. You couldn’t tell whether you were at the top or bottom end of the ‘OK’ or ‘great’ scale, and you couldn’t really see how any changes you made would affect it. With this granular scale, you can make a change and move from 6 to 7, for example, and see that your efforts were successful. You can also better assess the greatest areas for improvement.”  1

• The second change is that the Quality Score will be assessed on a per-query basis, as opposed to being tied to the keyword indefinitely. 

“This way, AdWords will use the most accurate, specific, and up-to-date performance information when determining whether an ad should be displayed. Your ads will be more likely to show when they’re relevant and less likely to show when they’re not.  In addition, ads that were previously marked “inactive for search” because they didn’t meet the blanket Quality Score requirements may actually be placed in rotation for relevant queries.”  1

• Lastly, keywords will no longer be tied to a minimum bid. Instead, advertisers will see the minimum amount they would need to have their ad appear on the first page of results.

“According to the Inside AdWords blog, this change was tied directly to advertiser feedback.” “We learned that knowing your minimum bid wasn’t always helpful in getting the ad placement you wanted,” the company stated on the blog. “So we hope that first page bids will give you better guidance on how to achieve your advertising goals.” 1

We will be watching the effect of these changes on the campaigns we have under management.  The 10 point system may first appear to be helpful but we still don’t have enough specific information to know how to move from say a 7 to an 8 or 9.

The move to a per-query basis may be good; or may not.  Currently if you achieved a “Great” you would be there for a while.  It will be difficult to judge a moving target if the algorithm changes the ranking too often.  There is nothing to lead me to believe this will happen but we will be watching.

The minimum bid tied to first page results has me the most concerned.  How will the amateur search marketers respond to this?  If everyone starts fighting for the first page we will greatly increase the likelihood of bidding wars where everyone loses.

All we can do at this point is wait and see.  Once we have the proper intel we will adjust accordingly.

1  Tameka Kee, Media Post Online Media Daily 
 

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After three years of working with large and small franchise units I’ve conclude there is a simple formula for successful online marketing for franchisees.  The formula may be simple but its implementation is somewhat involved.  Read on:

1. Tailor Your Campaigns to Each Franchisee.  To properly implement an online marketing campaign for your franchisees you need a) a landing page for each product or service, b) hundreds, perhaps thousands of properly researched search terms, and c) dozens of ads that are designed to tie these terms to a specific landing page. This needs to be done for each franchisee fifty, one hundred, or a thousand times.   I’ve often seen a 50% improvement in performance just by tailoring a campaign.
2. Show the Ads Only in Areas that the Franchisee Can Serve.  Franchisees often lose money on online advertising.  The main culprit– paying to show an ad outside of the service area.  Considerable time and money can be lost when a franchisee is forced to interface with prospects they have little to no chance of converting to customers.  All this increases the Franchisee’s Customer Acquisition Costs which may lead to an erroneous conclusion that online marketing does not work.
3. Route the Prospect to the Web Page of Franchisee in their Area. Just as the campaign needs to be specific to the franchisee—the page the prospect is sent to must be specific to the franchisee.  When a prospect arrives at your site from the organic or “free” listings, it’s okay to send them to your home page that contains your “Store Locator” tool.  Prospects who click on paid search ads tend to be more impatient.  Here’s where using a combination of the search engine’s local targeting options and a localized landing page can really lift conversions.
4. Manage each Individual Franchisee’s Campaign.  In addition to setting up franchisee level campaigns, changes to bids, ad copy, landing pages, offers and keywords should occur at the local level.  Why?  Here’s where online is no different than offline.  Offers, prices, products, services etc that sell really well in New York City may not resonate with consumers in Boise.  In addition the competition for customers may vary greatly from one market to the next.  This is hard work, but if you really want to see stellar campaign results, it’s a must do.
5. Separate Out Selling Franchises From Securing Business for the Franchisee.  Franchisors want to sell more franchisees, which is a good thing.  Franchisees want more customers, which is also a good thing.  Although both are good, they are very different.  A direct response campaign should have a singular focus.  Promoting too many things at once only distracts and confuses the prospective customer.  If the keyword that brought the prospect to your site is “Math Help,” the page they land on should be all about proving how you’re the best option for helping them with math and nothing else.  I’ve even seen a case where a franchise was driving all search traffic to the main page of the site, which in addition to selling franchises, also encouraged visitors to enter complaints about a franchisee!  Remember, your competition is only one click of the Back Button away.

Nothing that I’ve stated above is rocket science.  But if you have more than a handful of franchisees in your system, it can be a daunting task.  Your choice is to either staff up or hire a qualified agency to run your campaigns.  In either case, if you follow these rules your franchisees will get more customers from the Internet.   

Steve Thompson is co-founder and Managing Director at siteEDGE agency.  Steve has extensive experience in structuring; managing and optimizing online marketing campaigns for small and large (+500 units) franchise systems as well as large companies with a regional or local focus.  To contact Steve, email him at Steve dot Thompson at siteEDGE agency dot com. 

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I have blogged on Google’s Quality Score before.  It was the usual insight about why its important to get a good quality score.  I went into how getting a bad quality score may cause you to pay more to be in position number 4 than your competition paid to be in position number 2.  I even talked about some things to do that may help to improve a quality score.  I’m sure the insiders at Google had a good laugh because no matter how much I hypothesized, I had no varifiable evidence on what will increase a quality score.

Earlier today Google may have had a gitch that made public some of the variables used to make up the quality score.  This is the buzz anyway.  Eric Landers of Search Engine Journal published in his blog that immediately below each of the sponsored search results (AdWords) were three separate variable names and values.  Eric has screen shots and an opinion on what these may mean.  Since this gitch has since been corrected by Google I wasn’t fortunate enough to have seen this myself to allow me to share my insight.  I will at least point you to Eric’s Blog on this so you can get it directly from him.

Technorati Tags: Paid Search, PPC, Analytics, Campaign Tracking,  google content network, google site targeting

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Recently, our managing director and fearless co-leader, Janice Thompson, was featured in an Advertising Crossing article.

Here are a few prime snippets from her interview, head on over there to read the whole thing.

The company has worked with a wide range of talent, focusing its campaigns on “delivering more direct sales or leads for [its] clients,” says Thompson, which include large nonprofit clients and Fortune 500 companies as well as middle-market businesses.

“We’re snobs when it comes to running campaigns that can be measured in terms of bottom-line results,” Thompson says.

Which is why campaigns that help decrease client costs — “campaigns where we’ve been able to decrease a client’s advertising costs by 33% while increasing the results by 34%” — are Thompson’s pride and joy.

“I guess it goes back to my financial background,” Thompson adds. “I know we’re delivering real value for the client.”

Great interview Janice!

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Marty is considered one of worlds leading experts in “Electronic Retailing”, which includes internet, television, radio, and teleseminars.  He joins SiteEDGE from FawnKey & Associates, which he owned and operated from 1999 to 2007.   FawnKey & Associates is a business and marketing consulting firm with particular emphasis in e-commerce.  In this capacity, Marty earned hundreds of millions of dollars for his clients.  Marty also has experience in Mergers & Acquisitions, completing over $200 million in corporate acquisitions and divestitures from 2001 to 2003.  Marty shares his knowledge of Interactive marketing through his regular “Online Strategies” column in Electronic Retailer magazine, is frequently featured in marketing and business publications, and speaks to live audiences around the world about online marketing at numerous conferences and tradeshows.

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Online Activity
Tracking clicks to online sales is simple. Simply place the appropriate tracking code on your Thank You page and you know which search terms are and are not contributing to your sales. The same holds true for the submission of online forms, appointments, appications, chats, e-mails–pretty much anything that occurs online.

Offline Activity
Tracking clicks to offline sales is a bit more complicated. You can instruct the customer to mention a code they obtain online to claim a offline discount. Or you can have them print out a certificate or coupon with a bar code that they take to the store. You can even associate each search term with the the code or bar code on the coupon and certificate to track which keywords are performing. This could be very tedious if you are running thousands of search terms but is probably worth the effort.

In Between Online and Offline
Phone calls are not necessarily online or offline, but something in between. It is not as easy to associate a search term with a phone call in this “in between” world. The way to accomplish this is to assign an unique phone number to each search term. This could get very cost prohibitive if, like with most campaigns, you are running 1,000 to 10,000 terms. Imagine securing 1,000 or more unique phone numbers and placing them on 1,000 or more unique landing pages (actually you can avoid multiple landing pages with dynamic content) and setting up the campaign so each search term is associated with its unique phone number. The information learned from this will probably save thousands of dollars in the long term but still may not be worth the effort.

Need for a Click to Phone Call Tracking Technology
Ideally there would be a technology that automatically assigns a phone number to a search term, dynamically places that phone number on the landing page, forwards the calls to the real phone number, and tracks everything for you. Hundreds of phone numbers may still be required but let the technology handle the assignment and minimize the number of phone lines required to the absolute minimum. It seem like as much as we have done with computers we should be able to fulfil a simple requirement like this.

Technology Delivered
siteEDGE Agency clients have access to this technology. We still have to determine if the potential cost to be saved outweighs the cost of integrating the technology, but once we pass this due diligence we will not hesitate to use every tool at our disposal to minimize money wasting search terms and to maximixe money making terms.

If you would like more information on this technology feel free to call Steve Thompson at 816-587-8880 x102 and we will help you determine if it is right for you.

Technorati Tags: Paid Search, PPC, Analytics, Campaign Tracking, Phone Call Tracking

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Read the complete article Here

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A June 19th research brief from the Center of Media Research reported that spam continues to plague the internet as more Americans than ever say they are getting more spam than in the past, but are less bothered by it than before.

According to the brief in June 2003, when internet users were first asked how spam affected their life on the internet, 25% of users said spam was a big problem for them. Three and a half years later, the percentage of users who say spam is a big problem has dropped to 18%. On the positive side, the percentage of users who say spam is not at all a problem has risen from 16% to 28%. And the portion of email users who take the middle ground, describing spam as an annoyance but not a big problem, hovers at about half (51%) down from 57% in 2003.

Part of the reason for more tolerance is the average e-mail user has gotten more sophisticated. They are fighting back with spam filters and alternate e-mail accounts.

I view all this as good news for us e-mail marketers. If we continue to used opt-in e-mail lists, abide by The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, we will continue to reach the consumers who are important to the products and services we offer and will continue to improve our ROI.

A brief recap of what The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires:

• It bans false or misleading header information. Your email’s “From,” “To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person who initiated the email.
• It prohibits deceptive subject lines. The subject line cannot mislead the recipient about the contents or subject matter of the message.
• It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests. You may create a “menu” of choices to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to end any commercial messages from the sender.Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your commercial email. When you receive an opt-out request, the law gives you 10 business days to stop sending email to the requestor’s email address. You cannot help another entity send email to that address, or have another entity send email on your behalf to that address. Finally, it’s illegal for you to sell or transfer the email addresses of people who choose not to receive your email, even in the form of a mailing list, unless you transfer the addresses so another entity can comply with the law.
  
  
• It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender’s valid physical postal address. Your message must contain clear and conspicuous notice that the message is an advertisement or solicitation and that the recipient can opt out of receiving more commercial email from you. It also must include your valid physical postal address.

Technorati Tags: e-mail marketing, Can-Spam

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This is a reference to the February 6, 2007 article in the business section of the Kansas City Star that echoed many points that we have been preaching for months, but goes a step further by supplying specific examples of success stories. This article begins by talking fundamentally about blogs being different from a static Web site because they contain continuously updated information where the most recent entry appears on top. One quote from the article indicates “blogging has brought him more clients in two years than phone book advertising did in seven years.” Another quote indicated that “their blog was not designed to generate business but to share current developments quickly and easily with other lawyers in the firm and with existing clients.” This is noble but I am sure they don’t mind the additional benefits gained of signing a few new clients.

The legal profession is an excellent example of how to apply the blogging technology. This profession has the built in benefit of attracting individuals looking for information they are willing and able to provide. The blog site should be set up to be search engine friendly. After all we want Google, Yahoo and MSN, etc. to pick up the postings so people can find and read them. The blog site should be structured in a way that allows the categories (e.g. wills and probate, employment, bankruptcy, immigration, etc.) to be easily accessed and the blog appropriately posted.

Blog site www.homeofficelawyerblog.com was mentioned in the article and provides a sample of a fairly good implementation. This blogger concentrated on a niche market (home office businesses) and provides information in categories that are of interest to this target market. This blogger appears to post a blog entry every other day and is benefiting from the effort.

Blogging can take from five to 15 hours a week even after the blogging site is up and operational. There are ways to minimize this effort and siteEDGE Agency is here to assist. Let us know what you think.

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