Search Engine Marketing Battle – SEO or PPC?

December 19, 2009 – 11:43 pm

Most businesses today have come to the realization that they need Search Engine Marketing for their business. But, should you do Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) or both? Well, let’s have a look at their pro’s and cons and see which is right for your business.

SEO

Pros:

  • Virtually Free (But, it takes time.)
  • Long term results
  • Good for branding
  • More users click on natural listings

Cons:

  • Lower conversion rates than PPC
  • Limited amount of keywords to advertise on
  • Long term investment

PPC

Pros:

  • Instant traffic source
  • Able to advertise on several keywords
  • More traffic outside of search engine searches
  • Higher conversion rates
  • Better medium for testing
  • Geographic targeting

Cons:

  • Must pay for ad spend
  • Small mistakes can lead to large losses
  • Takes time to achieve an ideal ROI

Both

Of course we’d recommend that you do both, but that’s not just because of the industry I’m in, the facts speak for themselves. In a recent conversation with Dave Davies at Bean Stalk SEO he stated that he had read that when users see you in the paid and natural search results it can boost conversion rates by approximately 14%. Also, by doing both you’ll get the long term branding of SEO and the instant traffic that converts from PPC.

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Social Media Break Up!

November 15, 2009 – 3:45 pm


Social Media needs to break up!

What is Social Media? Well it consists of about a million sites, concepts, types of media and web 2.0 and 3.0 concepts.

Why do people keep lumping it together as one type of online marketing? Pay Per Click and SEO are separate and completely different from email marketing or media buying, so, why would we take everything else and call it one thing?

Well, I don’t honestly think that the title “Social Media” will disband anytime soon, but in the meantime I’ll break it down myself.

Blogs

I think everyone has heard of or understands what a blog is, this is one! A blog is an online journal, a web-log.

Examples:

In the past years blogging has evolved and taken on many new forms, but one of the newest forms is micro-blogging. Twitter.com is a clear example of this (yes, I think Twitter fits under blogs).

Social Networking

It may not have started with Myspace.com and Facebook.com, but these two companies have been instrumental in taking social network to new heights. Social networking is a place where you can make friends and stay connected to people you know. You can stay up to date with what your friends are doing, where they work, who they are dating, see photos of them and many other activities.

Examples:

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is the idea of any idea becoming like a virus and spreading across several platforms to reach a number of different users. It can rarely be targeted and almost never guaranteed that a marketing campaign will go viral, but when they do it can be a huge success and be seen by millions of people in one day. The effectiveness of a viral campaign comes down to whether or not a user wants to forward it to friends and spread the word.

Examples:

Video

Video marketing is fairly self explanatory, it’s the making of a video for publication on the internet. Technology has made it possible for nearly anyone with a camera to make a movie and easily publish it online. Video can then be embedded within a site, used to create a Vlog (video blog) or used to help a viral campaign get launched.

Examples:

Photo

Again, pretty straight forward. Photo sites are any site where you can upload a number of pictures for display, storage or sharing. If you have a camera and can point and shoot you can publish your photos to the web and send them to millions of people to view. It’s even possible for you to sell your photos online through stock photo companies.

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is the collaboration of users to complete project, discuss a topic or work together in pieces to complete an end goal. The internet allows us to work collaboratively with a number of people spread throughout the world to deliver an end goal. Probably the best example of this is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia created by users who manually update the content. It’s easily the most up to date and comprehensive encyclopedia.

Examples:

Social News

Social news is when one user submits, to a social news site, a link to an article, image or video as something they like or find interesting and a number of other users also find it interesting as well. Users then vote to raise the popularity of the news piece and it is then voted up to the do of a social news site where more people will view it. Having an article, site, image or video can deliver a number of users to a given site in a matter of moments, but can also be crippling to servers if they aren’t properly equipped for the surge.

Examples:

Aggregators

Since Social Media is so fragmented and disjointed it makes sense that there are services that will aggregate information across a number of platforms and put it in one convenient place where you can make use of it.

Examples:

More?

Well yes, there are probably tons more sites and concepts that I haven’t mentioned here and a bunch more that are yet to come. But, as you can now see, there are tons of sub-topics within Social Media and although I feel that it needs to break up, it likely won’t because for now it’s easy enough to cover all of these topics under one umbrella.

Adding to the complexity and confusion of Social Media is that all or some of these Social Media sites and concepts work together. You can publish your Twitter feed to Facebook, post a Video on your Blog or link them all together using various software products. So, it’s important to know what type of Social Media is right for you and the most effective way to make use of it.

Stay social.

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Advertiser’s jumping on the Online Marketing Bandwagon!

October 10, 2009 – 12:08 pm

Recent news of Southern Comfort, www.southerncomfort.com, moving their entire ad spend from traditional advertising to online is just another sign that not only is marketing changing, but online is proving to be more and more effective.

Southern Comfort says “savings from the switch to a 100% digital media buy will allow the brand to bolster its presence in bars and at retail, as well as through events. It will also give it a significant footprint online, where a $10 million budget stretches very far.” And that “As we’ve focused more on 21 to 29, TV becomes less and less effective at reaching that audience. It was getting harder and harder to hit our target without so much waste.”

This is a clear sign that companies are starting to understand the value of online marketing and the value it can deliver. They’re also recognizing the value of advertising to consumers who are searching for their products and services, avoiding wasted advertising spend.

Century 21 also announced that they will be allocating a significant portion of their ad spend to online. Currently Century 21 committed 10% of their ad budget to online marketing, but they plan to increase this greatly of the next few years becasue the results on the online ad spend warrants a shift.

As Beverly Thorne, Century 21 senior VP-marketing, told Advertising Age, “the company’s research and testing revealed that its online investments in 2008 were substantively more productive and efficient than its offline efforts.”

In today’s interactive market consumers are more fragmented and dispersed across several channels. It’s much more difficult to reach target markets. They’re not just sitting in front of the tv or reading a newspaper. Consumers continue to use these channels, but their usage rates are lower and lower each year.

You can now find users on any number of news sites, social networks, blogs, video sites, search engines or many other media channels. Consumers are becoming users, users of the media they demand and want to see. They now have options to ignore what they don’t want to see and focus on the things they desire.

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Why is PPC so difficult?

September 25, 2009 – 4:13 pm

PPC Frustration

Pay Per Click is a very complex animal and even those who think they understand it, can’t possibly say they know it all. The reason PPC marketing is so difficult is because of all the different variables involved. Probably the most frustrating part of PPC for the Average Joe is that you can lose a ton of money if you don’t do it properly. The upside to this is that if it’s done right PPC can be a very effective and efficient marketing tool.

So, what are these variables that cause it to be so difficult?

  • Keywords
  • Content Network
  • Text Ads
  • Banner Ads
  • Landing Pages

The more consistent and relevant you can make your ad campaign from keyword to landing page the more effective it will be.

What does this mean?

It means that the more your ad campaign relates to each component along the way the more effective it will be.

Example: Keyword=“blue suede shoes”, Text Ad = “Buy Blue Suede Shoes”, Landing Page says “Get your blue suede shoes here!”

The Variables

Keywords

Pretty simple, right? Select relevant keywords, sort them in to related groups and drive the traffic to a site that is relevant to those keywords. Seems simple, but, what about negative keywords? Broad, phrase or exact match? But, the most important question to answer is, where are your users/visitors at in the buying process? Are they looking for a review site, information, a quote or are they ready to purchase? Trust me, this matters! How do you find this out? How do you capitalize?

Content Network

Okay, so you’ve figured out your keywords for search and decided to advertise on Google search and their search partners, phew, glad that’s done. But, now do you want to advertise on their content network? What does this mean and how does it work? Basically Google will take your keywords and find relevant sites that make sense for your ad. There’s a ton of quality traffic on the content network, so you want to get this right.

Text Ads

Keywords, check. Content Network, check. Now to make some text ads. Are you going to use the Keyword insertion tool? Should it be title case or sentence case? www.DomainName.com works best, right? Or is it DomainName.com?

These are just a few questions you want to ask yourself when creating your text ads. You’ll definitely want to test, but how many ads per ad group will make for an effective test? Also, which ads work best with which keywords? How do I optimize them, by click through rate or by conversion rate?

Banner Ads

Wait a second, Google doesn’t allow banner ads. Well, that’s partially correct. Google doesn’t allow banners ads on their search results or their partners search results, but it does allow for it on the content network. So, this adds another variable, because how do you optimize the banner ads and which sizes are most effective? Are they better than text ads?

Landing Pages

Well, at least this is easy, we just send them to our site. Unfortunately, no. You need to send them to a page that’s relevant to what they are searching for. Remember, are they here for information, a quote? Do they want reviews or testimonials? Or, most ideally they are just here to purchase or sign up. So, if your page isn’t geared to the correct type of visitor you’ll just be wasting those clicks.

And that my friend is why PPC is so difficult. I haven’t even attempted to answer the question of how to make it work. Just consider the variables and you’ll understand the complexities.

But, don’t forget that when it’s done right PPC can be a gold mine for your profit margin and/or the growth of your business!

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Is Online Marketing right for your business?

September 9, 2009 – 5:14 pm

Well, in a word, yes.

It doesn’t matter what type of business you are or how you operate. If your clients are online, or will be, then online marketing will be right for you.

But, how do you choose what types to participate in? How do you know which will be the most effective?

Start out by asking these questions:

  • What are my businesses goals?
  • What are our marketing goals? (Branding? Lead Generation? Sales?)
  • Who is your target demographic?
  • Who is your target customer? (For example: Married, middle aged women, living in Victoria, BC, Canada, who likes to sew)

These are just examples of some of the questions you need to ask. From here you’ll need to do some research as to where your users are and what areas of online marketing are the most effective for reaching your target market. Without taking the time to determine each of these items you’ll really be floundering and that wont’ be good for anyone!

My personal opinion is that you should probably do all types of marketing for the best customer reach, but if you have a limited budget it’s best to figure out the best ways to spend that money effectively. In online marketing the old saying “you have to spend money to make money” couldn’t be more true. But, some people just “spend money”, don’t do that!

Types of online marketing:

Email

Everyone loves to hate email marketing and it comes with that ugly tag “SPAM”. But, not all email marketing is SPAM and there are several things you can do to not come across as “spammy”. It’s about permission marketing, market to the people who are actually interested. Don’t annoy people who aren’t interested in your product, why would you want to market to them anyway? Don’t waste money!

Search Engine Marketing

My favourite! Search engine marketing covers both SEO (natural/organic listings) and SEM/PPC (paid/sponsored). While SEO is considered free, it’s really not. It requires a lot of work, either yours or your agency’s, and even when you have the results, they can quickly change. SEO is great for branding and shows a lot of credibility for your business.

Paid search, as the name implies, is not free and if it’s done ineffectively it can be very costly. Many companies have “dabbled” in paid search and learned a hard lesson, it’s not easy! But, when done well and correctly it can be very effective and help grow your company’s margin, user base and brand recognition.

Social Media

Social Media covers a lot of different areas, you can check out my blog post here for more details. From Blogging, to Facebook, to Twitter and Digg, it’s all considerd “social media”. I see it more as a way to strengthen your brand, network and keep up with your competition than  a sales or lead generation medium, but that doesn’t hurt it’s credibility or effectiveness!

Other/More

Oh, of course there’s more, so, so, so much more. But, this is only one blog post. Stay tuned for more!

So, as I said above, online marketing is right for your business. The question you need to ask is what type of online marketing is right and most effective?

Click it!

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Social Media – my, how the Internet has changed!

August 6, 2009 – 4:36 pm

Guest post by Catherine Novak.

I was visiting the website of one of my closest childhood friends earlier today.  It’s a sweet little non-commercial project, which she has put together for family and friends (and for that reason alone, I’m not going to provide a link to it – sorry!)  I looked through the site, which she designed and developed herself, and marvelled at the nice photo interface she used to show off her new home and all the work that’s been done on it.  “Sweet!” I thought, “I’m going to scroll down and leave a comment”.  Wouldn’t you know it, there was nowhere to do so.  Not a blog post or page in sight.  In fact, she didn’t even have a Contact Us page… good thing she’s not planning to use this domain for business!

I was stunned – not only because she didn’t use a blog to post the progress of her home renovations, but also because it shows how much our use of the Internet has changed.  “Brochure” websites are an endangered species.  It’s now a given that if you have a website, there will probably be a blog attached to it somewhere. Or  – if you don’t want to blog, you’ll probably share your Twitter name and embed your latest tweets on your home page.  Your Contact Us page and your email signature will likely invite people to become your friend (or fan) on Facebook or to connect on LinkedIn.   And those places will link back in turn to your website.  Static pages used to be the norm, and they are becoming the exception.

This evolution is taking place in part because search engines prefer dynamic, fresh content. They also prefer pages with high traffic.  Add those things together, and you are more likely to find some business’s Twitter account on the first page of Bing or Google than you are their actual website- particularly if they haven’t done much in the way of online marketing or search engine optimization.

But more to the point – search engines prefer dynamic fresh content because PEOPLE prefer a site they can interact with.  In October 2008 – eons ago in this latest evolution of the Internet, social media users made up 60% of Americans.  (This year, over 2/3 of Canadians use social media).  Here’s what they told Cone, Inc. about business and social media:

“According to the survey, 93 percent of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media, while an overwhelming 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its consumers via social media. In fact, 56 percent of users feel both a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.
“The news here is that Americans are eager to deepen their brand relationships through social media,” explains Mike Hollywood, director of new media for Cone, “it isn’t an intrusion into their lives, but rather a welcome channel for discussion.”

The internet is a much more personal and interactive medium than the print and broadcast media that have come before it.  It’s an incredibly powerful medium that now allows us to communicate on a person-to-person level with a multitude of others – we’ve got the bandwidth to do it, and now we have a plethora of tools as well that make multi-directional communication an everyday occurence.

Are you using those tools?

Catherine Novak is owner of Wordspring, which teaches individuals and businesses how to use social media effectively.  She is also head of sales and social media for IdeaZone.ca, a leading web design and marketing firm in Victoria BC.  She and Paul Holmes of IdeaZone.ca founded the Social Media Club – Victoria Chapter, earlier this year.

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It’s just a domain name!

July 23, 2009 – 1:44 pm

Well, no, it’s not just a domain name. It’s your new address on the web and it does matter. It especially matters to your users, it’s all part of how they will evaluate your site and subsequently your business.

Lately I’ve seen a few local companies registering .biz and .info domains, it makes me cringe. It’s not their fault though, they don’t know that .biz and .info scream “SPAM”!

Here’s a little background on choosing a domain name.

.com

A .com domain is by far the best domain you could get, it is the most respected and most well known. The only problem is that just about every word in the dictionary has already been registered and it’s very competitive for several terms. Always try for a .com first!

.net

Easily the second best domain, but a .com is still so much better!

Interesting note on .net’s – have you ever wondered why Poker domains are registered as .net’s? Have a look at the same site as a .com. It’s because they know you’ll go to the .com, but they can’t advertise that site. Example: PartyPoker.net vs. PartyPoker.com. ;)

.org

The .org domain was originally created for non-profit organizations, but several companies now use it as their main sites. Sometimes as a natural result of their company’s evolution. Example: SEOmoz.org.

.mobi

Domain names with the extensions .mobi were designed specifically for use with mobile phones. It hasn’t quite taken off yet, but I don’t think that cell phones are completely compatible and useful with the internet, at least not in it’s current form.

.us or .ca

Country designated domains, like .us, .ca, .au, etc. were created for country specific businesses. They’ve also been used for creative domains like Deli.icio.us, the actual domain name registered is www.icio.us. Pretty creative, right? Well, it actually hasn’t worked all that well from a brand perspective.

.biz

Eww…..a .biz domain screams spam, unfortunately. I think it has to do with the fact that it’s a bit of a slang term and domains and spammers gobble these up because they are cheap and lots of them are available.

.info

See .biz. These domains just don’t resonate well with users, for whatever reason. You can actually register .info domains for $1.00/year.

.tv and .fm

Originally I thought these were created for television and fm radio, respectively. But, a little research shows that .tv is for the Island Nation of Tuvalu and .fm is for the Federated States of Micronesia. The reason people think they are for tv and radio is partly obvious and partly a sales and marketing tactic.

.cm

These hold boundless opportunities for monetization, if you should happen to live in Cameroon. Just check Google.cm to see the type of revenue that these could generate. Do you know anyone in Cameroon?

Tips

  • Always try for a .com first!
  • Avoid dashes (www.domain-name-now.com)
  • Don’t do spelling mistakes
  • Being creative can backfire. Del.icio.us?
  • Be careful adding words to obtain a good .com. Like all, now, usa, etc.

Here are some unintentionally funny domains and a good example of why you need to be careful.

  • Oldmanshaven.com
  • Americanscrapmetal.com
  • Freebase.com
  • Speedofart.com
  • IPanywhere.com

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Coastal Clicks washes up on shore

July 1, 2009 – 11:23 am

This is it, we are here!

Coastal Clicks arrived on shore in Victoria, BC, Canada today.

We are here to serve our clients with a more effective marketing spend and a better ROI. Not only is online marketing changing, but marketing in general is changing. There’s a greater need to spend your marketing dollars more effectively and we can do that for you.

So, stop spending money on untargeted, immeasurable media and work with us. We’ll work with you on all aspects of your online marketing advertising. We will consult you on your options and give you a better understanding of how online marketing works. Online marketing will allow you to obtain visitors that are looking for your business or service and we’ll ensure it delivers quality leads and sales to your business.

But, it’s not easy. With our expertise and experience we’ll help you to ensure you don’t waste any more money. Give us a call or email us today to get started! coastalclicks@gmail.com or 250-686-8956

Coastal Clicks

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