Category: Industry Insights

It’s an honest question. Tons of people have. There’s nothing wrong with it. It let’s you know what you’re up against. Here at Search Influence, we do it all the time. In fact, we measure it so much that it’s almost become ritualized. So I’ll ask again, have you measured your return on investment for all those dollars you’re spending on marketing?

Many business owners are under the impression that the more money they throw at a marketing strategy, the more money they’ll get back in return. It’s a logical strategy, but if you’re not measuring your ROI, how do you know is if it’s truly working? Luckily, there are plenty of tools out there that help you measure it.

The first step anyone should take is setting up a Google Analytics account. Analytics is a free web-based service that tracks visitor behavior on your site.  It’s an amazing tool that helps track your various marketing efforts.  It lets you know which keywords are used to reach your site and where your visits are coming from. That’s really just the tip of the iceberg. It can also tell you your Cost Per Lead if you have a Pay Per Click campaign, and also let’s you know your site’s conversion rate, which is your number of  leads divided by the number of visits to your site. This is critical information to know. Traffic is great and all, but if those visitors aren’t doing anything once they get there, it’s kind of pointless. Conversion rate distinguishes between which businesses are showers and which are growers.

The next step is to install call tracking. What this does is allow you to assign a unique phone number to all of your advertising efforts. You can have separate numbers for your ads in print, radio, television, or on the ‘Net. Not only does it allow you to distinguish which of your campaigns these calls are coming from, but it tells you when they called, where they’re calling from, the duration of the call, and whether or not it results in a sale. It also records information on calls that you miss.  This is invaluable information when measuring your ROI.

Lastly, if your site offers a service or call to action, install a form system. Don’t be shy and hide it on your “Contact Us” page, either. You want it in people’s faces, so put one on every page you can. It’s so much more beneficial than having people email you directly, which only gives you a snapshot of what you can know. With a form, you not only get the same information as you would through email, but you can see how they found your site, through what search engine (if any), and by using what keyword (again, if any).

There it is, the Holy Trinity of measuring your website advertising numbers and gains, or W.A.N.G. if you will. Now you’ve got no excuse. Pull out those proverbial rulers and start measuring!

Don Draper is the suave, womanizing Creative Director of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce on AMC’s Emmy Award-winning Mad Men. He’s intelligent, handsome, and has a Superman chest for crying out loud, but he is also the epitome of a tragic hero. Despite his best efforts, he just can’t seem to get a grip on his personal life and constantly falls into the trap of his compulsive infidelity and lies. Yet, many fans of the show covet his life even though he barely wants it himself. I chalk this up to two things: fantastic writing and the character’s genius and success in his work. When it comes to the world of 60s advertising, his wisdom is unparalleled, and most of it can be applied to modern-era marketing as well. So before I digress into a raving fanboy over my love for this show, I present to you a few tips from the “Don Draper Guide to Internet Marketing.”

“Give me more ideas to reject.”

SEO is a game of trial and error. Sure, there is a playbook of rules to follow to ensure some success, but these are constantly changing and you need ideas on how to overcome the challenges you’ll face when they do. It doesn’t matter how many bad ideas you come up with as long as one of them is a winner.  Not everything you try is going to work. The only thing that matters is the one that does. That’s the one people will copy and that’s the one they’ll remember.

“You manage people’s expectations.”

As a member of the account management team at Search Influence, one of the main things I do is manage accounts (obviously); however, almost just as importantly, I manage the expectations of my clients as well. I can get any one of them to rank higher organically in Google, but this doesn’t mean they’ll see more sales simply because they’re listed above their competition. If their site is hideous and hard to navigate and they don’t want to put in the money necessary to fix it up, I can’t guarantee that our efforts will amount to more money for them. Don’t make promises just to make the client happy, unless you know for a fact that you can keep it.

“Just so you know, the people who talk that way think that monkeys can do this. They take all this monkey crap and stick it in a briefcase, completely unaware that their success depends on something more than shoeshine.”

Like I said previously, I can get someone higher Google rankings. That’s formulaic. It’s easy. The hard part is delivering an ROI to the client. That’s the service for which they are paying. They want to make much more money than they’re spending on me, and I’d better deliver. Ranking higher on Google is a simple shoeshine. Getting them more business is like giving them a new wardrobe. That’s what they want. It’s what they need. Otherwise they wouldn’t need me.

I really want to end this blog post with a profound, Don Draper-esque quote, but I’m not that suave. Instead, I’ll let the real Don Draper close us out: “Yeah, I eat a lot of apples.” OK, maybe that wasn’t so profound. What do you want from me? I’m no Don Draper. I’m more of a Pete Campbell…

Along with being a search marketing expert (that’s right, I said it), I am a huge fanboy (that means I like comic books A LOT). Very rarely do my two worlds meet but recently there was an article posted about the social media battle of rival comic companies Marvel Entertainment and DC (Time Warner) and I could not resist responding and explaining to how small businesses can win at social media. Despite my unending love for DC Comics, Marvel Entertainment does far better jobs at internet marketing. This post will explain how you can make your small business’s internet presence “marvelous”. 

Why Marvel Wins at Fan Interaction

When you compare the Twitter and Facebook accounts of Marvel and DC, you can notice that Marvel has a larger and more active fanbase. Why I would love to say this is because Marvel has more interesting characters (frankly a red t-rex with a dinner jacket trumps a sociopathic underwear pervert with a bat fetish IMO), but the truth is Marvel makes an effort at interacting with their fans. This is something I tell clients over and over, replies are key to gaining and sustaining fans. The more you reply the more successful and active your followers will be. Though there may not be any measurable ROI in tweets, you can increase your brand awareness locally, as well as, have a have a group of individuals who you can promote specials and discounts immediately.

Why Marvel Wins at Site Design
Around the turn of the century, there was a stark increase in light-weight, interactive business sites. The age of minimalism is over and businesses like Marvel know this – people like when content is interesting. And what is more interesting than promoting new products, specials offers, and general business information? I am not saying your site should be a Trapster’s sticky cesspool (if you don’t get the reference, its not important), but it should reflect what you are promoting current and updated often. Marvel Entertainment does a fantastic job of promoting their different business lines on their homepage in an easy and interesting way. The easier and more interesting, the longer visitors stay. Visitors who stay are visitors who will buy.

Why Marvel Wins at SEO
SEO is the backbone of success for any business and obtaining high ranking on new phrases related to your business is key to dominating search results. Marvel has done so with the emerging digital comics market. Not only are they the first and second Google positions on the phrase “digital comics”, the Amazon.com result mentions them by name. Digital comics is a market which has high ROI than the standard print format, so dominating these position in organic search gives Marvel an advantage. Another astonishing fact, DC Comics’ site doesn’t appear anywhere in the first two pages of search results. Applying this methodology to other industries is simple, research new technology and developments, create landing pages and start optimizing before competitors are even aware of the potential.

As internet marketing becomes more and more important to small businesses, SEO and social media will continue to mutate. However, being active with fans, having well thought out site design, and great positioning on emerging search phrases, will always be important to growth. So the next time you start questioning the value have having an internet presence, remember you can either be the Invisible Woman in the room or you pull a Dr. Doom and dominate the web for your small business.

Superman Vs Thor Image From Wizard Universe

Devil Dinosaur image from Weekly Crisis

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released the results for their 2010 Half- Year study on Internet Advertising Revenue.

Not surprising to many is that Internet Marketing Revenues for the 1^st half of 2010 alone totaled $12.13 billion dollars – an 11.3% increase over the same period in 2009.  If that number is surprising, it’s likely you haven’t yet had your eyes opened to the wonder that is Internet Marketing.

Obviously I’d be a champion for all businesses to hop on the online marketing train, but my beliefs are founded in the great results I’ve seen in my time working within the field, as well as the benefits that online marketing offers, particularly compared to traditional forms of advertising.

The main benefit, in my opinion,  is that you can measure the true effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns. Through the use of phone call tracking numbers and contact forms, you can see the source of your leads, which allows you to measure which aspects of your online marketing mix are most effective. Given strong internal processes, this data also allows you to track leads and potential customers all the way through the close of the sale, giving you your true return on investment figure.  This brings up the importance of making use of the technology available to assist business owners with tracking leads, or even simply using a spreadsheet if you can maintain the data.

For example, say you receive 20 leads over a period of time from source A, and 10 from source B. Many marketing managers or small business owners might view source A as more valuable. However, if you have strong systems in place that track the sales process from the submission of a form or a call to the close of the sale, you might see that 30% of leads from source B become actual customers (3) while only 10% of leads become customers from source A (2).

The benefits of tracking are evident in the IAB study as they report that “the most prevalent pricing model since 2006” is performance-based pricing. The effectiveness of tracking can also fall into the hands of your online marketing agency, as many use leads to prove their value. They may also be willing to work with you to compare your new customers to incoming leads in order to further prove a real-life ROI.

Additional benefits of online advertising include, but are certainly not limited to, the ability to target as well as the cost effectiveness of many programs available. Many online campaigns have a relatively low cost of entry. With search engine optimization and pay-per-click ads, since the magic is in the text, once your site is built there’s no hefty graphic design costs compared to print.

According to the IAB study, retail is the leading purchaser of online advertising. Small to medium businesses need not be intimidated by the large share of the market for which their industry accounts, as yet another benefit of online marketing is that small businesses can compete with larger businesses in the online realm.

Top Industries of Online Advertising:

1.     Retail

2.     Telecom companies

3.     Leisure Travel

4.     Financial Services

5.     Automotive

6.     Computing advertisers

7.     Consumer Packaged Goods and Food Products

8.     Entertainment

9.     Pharma and Healthcare

10. Media

The IAB also reports that the largest portion of revenue is spent on search-related advertising. Search related advertising can be the most effective and bring in more quality leads than display advertising because your products and services are being shown to individuals who are seeking what you are selling (if you target your ads appropriately).

All things considered, online marketing can certainly work for you, but many times, when done incorrectly, advertisers and small business owners don’t see the value because they don’t have enough information to either a) conduct it effectively or efficiently or b) to even know if they are. In this case, advertisers, both small and large, should reach to a seasoned Internet marketing firm with the skills and experience to help you and your business utilize this ever-growing segment of the advertising world.

View the full report here.

Thanks to vizzzual-dot-com for the photo!