Google Adwords listings can provide an effective PPC program

PPC Advertising Does Not Depend On Having A Top Ranked Website For Good Results

Yes, we’re accustomed to hearing good things about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). If done well, SEO can boost your website to high organic search engine rankings. Of course, a lot of good things must happen over an extended period of time… as you develop informative articles, blog posts, pages and YouTube videos for your site, along with highly optimized keyword strategies. But there’s no guarantee your content marketing will pay off. Google’s famous algorithm is a complex formula that calculates which sites ranks well for a particular page on a particular search query. First page ranking isn’t a sure thing, by any means.

To speak plainly, your site may never achieve satisfactory rankings for reasons that go beyond your business or organization. Have you ever noticed how often you’ll find Wikipedia entries, or in-depth research articles from recognized universities, foundations or scholarly journals on the first search engine results page? Their content ranks well because these organizations are devoted to producing articles that are purely informational. Additionally, such listings can often fill several pages of organic results for many important keyword categories.

So where does that leave you? If you’re aiming to sell a product you may find pay-per-click (PPC)  sponsored listings can benefit your online marketing program in several ways. Here’s a few important points to consider:

• In SEO the search engines control the rankings through secret algorithms, which are always changing.
• You can spend a lot of time trying to break into the first page rankings with years of organic SEO activity.
• Meanwhile your competition is converting online leads into sales!
• With PPC you can immediately start driving toward the final results you’re seeking. In a broad sense you’re taking a more direct path to the final goal.
• PPC advertising does not depend on having a top ranked website for good results. If your Google Adwords listings are well conceived — with a tight adherence to specific adgroups and landing pages — you’ll establish control over your settings and keywords while methodically testing your ad copy.
• The feedback you gain from PPC is much quicker than SEO. You can succeed faster, fail faster, and subject your assumptions to rigorous testing.
• It make sense to be there now using PPC data to optimize your campaigns, including the SEO rankings you’ll be using for the long term.
• You’ll discover what your customers are thinking, what they’re responding to, and what needs to change. Additionally, you will end up with solid data that confirms your sales premise, or refutes it categorically. Either way, you win!

There’s nothing wrong with SEO from our point of view. However, the benefits of a PPC campaign shouldn’t be dismissed without a fair hearing. Our advice: don’t automatically assume that SEO is “free” because you’ll most certainly have to invest precious resources into the effort, especially if you’re expecting to see good results. Instead, be sure to use both approaches — SEO and PPC — for best results.

Portrait of a youthful Steve Jobs

How can a golden age of online marketing take place amid turbulent stock markets, high unemployment and a growing European financial crisis that threatens the U.S. Banking system? Maybe it’s premature to say “golden age.”  Just one more dramatic downswing and we may see a double-dip recession. Yet, when I think of all that’s been happening I say quietly to myself, “hey, this may be the golden age of Internet marketing.”

It may be wise to address this issue because the transformational power of technology has grown more quickly than other parts of our economy. Considering the end of an era with Steve Jobs’ passing, one can easily assert that a very special golden era has also passed with him.

Moammar Gadhafi: Brought down by cell phones?

But there’s something about social media and the state of all things digital that keeps me thinking we’re in the midst of a spectacular run, with everything accelerating at Tech Speed.  Indeed, the fall of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya, and the stunning swiftness of the Arab Spring, was sustained by cell phone technology.

With regard to marketing, just take a look at the customer. He/she is an empowered person with Mouse-in-Hand who enjoys enormous and unparalleled freedom:

• Finding great websites and blogs
• Great information on nearly any product or service
• A robust era of social media sharing
• A  host of ways to publish and republish individual passions and ideas
• With everything one could possibly want online everyday

Yet people are not getting into the car, or punching their phone lines as they once did with basic questions. Clearly online content is profuse — as wide as it is deep. The customer has become very savvy and well educated before contacting a particular business about a specific product.

Business-to-business and business-to-consumer, everyone sees the same thing: human behavior has fundamentally changed. Right now people are looking for your product: locally, regionally, internationally. Their quest for information growing. If you own or manage a business, are you taking advantage of everything that’s happening? Are you seizing the day? Or, are you still waiting for something, or someone, to light a match under you so that you can finally take action?

Here’s three big reasons to move:

• Internet Marketing is continuing to grow and evolve.
• The Internet is beginning to mature, e.g. Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin now dominate social media (with Google + on the way up)
• The customer has spoken. They have the mouse, cell phone and tablet in hand. They’re excited by the Internet and it shows.

The time for action is now. You have every reason and incentive to get underway with that next idea or strategic campaign. There’s blogging, content marketing, micro-sites, mobile media, search engine optimization, online advertising and more. These tools are tremendously adaptive and effective. But you should think of them as much more than a random shopping basket of techniques. You’ll need a strategy to make everything work. (Full disclosure: that’s what our business is all about, finding the best strategy and tactics for the company involved.)

So, what do you think? Is this the Golden Age of Internet Marketing?

As always, your comments are greatly appreciated.

Consider The Long Tail When Thinking About Strategy (image from Wired Magazine).

As you think about developing a unified strategy for Internet marketing, you may find many points of creative fusion between your traditional advertising program and the emerging possibilities online. When you study unique characteristics, such as the Long Tail, you’ll encounter many transformative new ideas that may completely reshape your assumptions about business. As you get underway please remember:

1. Simply building a website won’t grow your business;
2. You’ll need an effective strategy to be successful online;
3. In fact, your current website may represent only the first step in a larger online program.

Many marketers fail to realize their website is just the beginning of a larger process. The overall purpose and depth of content on your domain may suggest a compelling new strategy. It’s important to have a sense of where the latent energy of your site may be going: to substantiate your credentials? Tell a product story? Generate leads? Or, direct sales?

Marketers Often Become “Stuck” On Strategy

Most people think creativity has more to do with art, music and literature and less to do with business, science and engineering. But that’s not the case!

• Creativity is the act of producing new ideas, approaches and actions;
• Innovation is the process of generating and applying ideas in a specific manner and context;
• Both definitions apply for your business, especially if you’re planning to leverage Web 2.0 applications;
• The Web is all about innovation!

Here’s where it gets interesting, and potentially exciting, especially if you think outside the box. Today, new competitors are rapidly emerging as traditional marketing practices evolve into new online propositions. To ride the waves in today’s economy we need to engage in lateral thinking and divergent thought. Today it is possible to do things we could only dream a few short years ago.

1. If you check out wootwine.com you’ll be looking at a special sale, for one day only. “Woot” is a domain that specializes in daily deals, one item only, at a very discounted price. We learned of them in a recent issue of Inc. Magazine. They build their customer relationships via Twitter. What’s interesting to us is the simplicity of the business model, one sale each day on one select item, a strategy that would be nearly impossible in the traditional retail world.
2. Kogi Korean BBQ, a company with just a little over one year of operations, serves Korean style meat in Mexican-style flatbread (an innovative idea!) in Los Angeles. Kogi designed its delivery system using Twitter to inform customers where their delivery truck is headed during the course of the day, so impassioned customers can enjoy their Korean fast food fix (see kogibbq.com).
3. Ms. Brigitte Dale won Yahoo!‘s Best Internet Personality 2008 for her quirky video blog posts. What’s she selling? Her creative talent of course. Though it may be difficult to envision her approach for business, these charming online videos feature sharp scripts, self-produced on a shoe string with surprising sophistication. Here’s a recent post on YouTube.

Practical Questions Must Be Encountered

Successful strategy is often built from tactical advantages (note our Online Marketing Awareness Map). Whether to build slowly with a focus on Content Marketing or more quickly with Internet Advertising, may depend on whose asking the question.

I. An e-commerce site dealing in branded items sold at discount might focus on:

• Area 1: Websites;
• Area 2: Online Advertising;
• Area 6: Landing Pages, Analytics & Conversion.

II. Whereas a manufacturer or B2B services firm might focus on:

• Direct mail and inside sales;
• Area 3: Content Marketing or Blogging;
• Area 5: Online Video;
• Area 6: Landing Pages, Analytics & Conversion

Start With Small Steps

It helps if you have a strategy. It can make a huge difference. But if you don’t have one (or, it’s just too confusing) you’ll benefit by taking smaller steps. It is hard to go wrong with good landing pages and well designed content featuring important keyword groups and site analytics. Pilot programs make sense. Add a company blog to the mix, or perhaps a Google Adwords campaign. Adwords can work quickly, which is one reason why sponsored search listings are so popular.

Yet, a hasty campaign cobbled together with little planning is unlikely to work very well, unless you’re very lucky. False starts can be demoralizing and damaging due to the possibility of a poor Quality Score from Google, which can take months to overcome. Better to work deliberately and strategically, even with a small beginning. Content marketing, especially from blogging, is designed to build up carefully over time.

Once again, let me suggest an important reminder: We’re striving to keep things simple (not simplistic) to help you in framing your initial approach. What’s right for you will depend on your product and the unique vision you may have for your business or enterprise.

Be Thorough In Developing Keywords

Marketers engaged in their first encounter with online advertising are often surprised at the amount of time they need to develop effective keywords and Adgroups. Using Google’s Keyword Generator can help you create hundreds of keywords. But don’t fall into the trap of letting the software do your thinking for you. Instead, as a first step, take the time to really think about your customers. Stand back, look at them as real people and don’t pigeon hole them. Ask how they might type a search query to find your product or service. Doing this in a candid manner makes you relate to them personally. This is a simple step that can help your website, online advertising or content marketing as well. It is also a great marketing practice for strategic planning in any medium.

There‚ is no end to the possibilities one can use in making the transition to online marketing. This may be a great time to reexamine your business and restart your marketing in a more innovative direction. We can take you through a few current campaigns we’ve done in helping our clients create a smooth transition to online marketing:

• Dorion-Gray Retirement Planning, Inc.
• Numerical Precision, Inc.
• RaueInsider.com

Thank you for taking the time to explore this “outside the box” online marketing series.  If you have any questions on how to get started, contact us, or leave a comment below.

Additionally, please take a moment to share any interesting strategies that you see online!

In this third part of our series we cover an important topic. Based on recent pieces we’ve seen online, or in magazines, many private business leaders are frustrated with the complexity of digital marketing and it’s new applications, online tools and strategies. While many of today’s consumers blithely transition to the Next Thing,* a host of marketing managers and corporate VP’s find themselves camped on the threshold of important changes.

Our Online Marketing Awareness Map

How to make the right decisions with so many new choices? We’ll admit there’s no single easy answer to that question. But then, marketing has never been easy. Web 2.0 is often called the participatory Web, a place where blogs, social networking sites and media sharing sites have transformed the world of marketing.

Our own efforts in this regard are straightforward. We developed an Online Marketing Awareness Map as an early step in creating a visual tool for discussion. It has since led to a laptop presentation, and to this particular series of Infusion Blog posts (please see Part I and Part II if you haven’t already read them).

Your Website Is The Base Station For Your Online Marketing Program

Websites

Our map begins (see illustration) with the top circle, labeled Websites. Today we field fewer questions about websites (we’ve all seen our share). Yet many clients do not fully realize their website is just the beginning of their online marketing program. Yes, it must be supplied with good content, usability, optimization and branding. It is indeed the base station for an entire online marketing program. Yet, it’s also a latent form of energy. For most business websites there’s much to be done in bringing real excitement, traffic and new results. Often the goal is to transform a static asset into a compelling and effective online marketing program. Think of  your business site as the first step. It’s important to have a sense of where that latent energy may be going: to substantiate your credentials, or tell a product story, or generate direct e-commerce sales. The purpose and overall depth of content on your domain may suggest a follow up strategy for online marketing.

Online Advertising

Moving clockwise to Online Advertising, our next circle. Again, few of us are strangers to this. By online advertising we refer to web based ads such as banners, tiles, widget ads or sponsored listings on Google (organic listings are discussed in Content Marketing). For banners, tiles and other units we’re looking at a Push Strategy similar to offline advertising, where you pay for exposure based on a cost per thousand impressions (CPM). Sponsored listings emulate the search characteristics of organic listings in everything but price, since you must pay for them, typically using a Pay Per Click (PPC) model. Online advertising in all its forms… requires a direct monetary investment. Dollars for traffic!

Dollars for Traffic!

For many marketers this is as far as they go: build a website and buy online ads linked to specified landing pages. An ecommerce site with branded items or specialty merchandise, coupled with good prices can do this pretty well, especially if they have read their niche properly.

Content Marketing - Builds traffic, credibility and reputation.

Our next category is Content Marketing. We see Content Marketing as long content designed to display thought leadership with high “favorables” on search engines. This means well developed websites, blogs, or sites in combination with blogs. With a blog you add fresh content and a new page to your domain with every post. Attract visitors with comments and your blog is building inbound links, another natural Search Engine Optimization (SEO) benefit. Blogs build traffic, credibility and reputation — nice things to have for one’s professional life or brand.

A good approach to blogging may require originality, or an Outside the Box approach to a niche topic. But it doesn’t have to be creative per se. Start by solving a problem your audience cares about. Find a voice. Build trust, confidence, desire. Be engaging. And, don’t oversell. In effect, you may want to begin by commenting on something that others in your industry have expressed or said. When you begin blogging, you’ll want to read other blogs and make appropriate comments. Join the discussion. Just don’t be too obvious about selling or becoming a shill for your product. Think of yourself as attending a business reception. Show a sincere interest in something someone else has said or written, that’s a good way to obtain natural reciprocity in a return visits to your blog.

Blogs humanize a brand, which is a very special thing. Who is blogging these days? A huge number of organizations and people involved in virtually every business and profession, from software development, training and freelancers, to product manufacturers, distributors, wineries, galleries and travel destinations, etc.

As with everything else, you’ll want to open yourself and your business to further innovation. Think of it as a creative fusion between the offline marketing you may be accustomed to and the new digital marketing you’re seeking to engage.

This discussion of the Online Marketing Awareness Map continues in Part IV.

Stay tuned.

Best wishes…

Greg Johnson

Clients often react to marketing as if it is just fun and games

Big mistake. Great marketing is resolute. Great marketing is supported by strong data and analysis. It is the product of a well founded strategy executed with passion and intelligence.

For The Times They Are A Changing

Remember that song? Driving my daughter to High School last week, she put the CD in the dashboard player. It was Bob Dylan’s “You Better Start Swimming…” I smiled when I heard the song.

“I didn’t know you liked Bob Dylan.”

“Everyone likes Bob Dylan dad.”

Then it hits me. It’s 6:30 AM and I realize Bob Dylan is a very successful marketer. Indeed, one might listened and learn:

• Successful marketers know how to swim. They know what it takes.
• They have learned to kick hard while under water.

For start up marketers the truth of these lyrics couldn’t be more succinct.

• You’d better start swimming, or else.
• Start ups must be on target with their strategy.
• They have to know how to do the right things.
• One out of five make it.

Then there are the more grown up corporate realities on marketing: The average tenure of a CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) is now less than two years; Ditto for the average agency relationship with clients. Most newspapers are scrambling to maintain their franchise (attempting to reinvent themselves online due to falling readership). And, fewer family firms are surviving.

Better start swimming or: You’ll… Sink… Like… A… Stone!

Here’s more:

• The internet is now the fastest growing marketing medium in the world.
• This year brought new pressure on the up-front TV Spot market. First time ever another medium has put such pressure on TV spending.
• Consumer generated media is all the rage. Consider the rise of Blogs, Facebook, YouTube, wireless computing, and Google’s unbelievable run.
• Not to mention The Long Tail.
• The Internet has brought unprecedented change.
• Technology now allows us to do things we could only dream.

If there’s a point that I want you to remember it’s this: marketing is very serious business. It’s always has been serious. Even more so now. For the times they are a changing!

Sometimes I think clients often continue to react to marketing as if it is just fun and games. Big mistake. Great marketing is resolute. Great marketing is supported by strong data and analysis. It is the product of a well founded strategy executed with passion and intelligence.

When you “go to market” you’re placing a substantial bet on the future.

Tonight we’re going to talk about how to swim. How to go to market. What to worry about, etc. Yet, we’re also going talk about changing times.”