Category: Internet Marketing

10 Tips for Small Businesses Using Google AdWords

  1. Use specific keywords: “little black dress” is better for a small business than “dress.” Specific keywords are less competitive and therefore less expensive. Use keywords relevant to your title, description and landing page to be ranked higher.
  2. Do competitive research. See what keywords your competitors are using by searching on Google and then use Google’s Keyword Planner to see how much they are paying.
  3. Use Google’s Keyword Planner to search a keyword and it will tell you average monthly searches, level of competition and suggested bid. It will also provide you with suggested keywords related to what you searched. Paying attention to suggested keywords would allow you to discover any good keywords that you may have forgotten.
  4. Plan your budget. You can set your daily budget or cost per acquisition. Google usually doesn’t let you go above your budget and makes it easy to set your budget how you want it.
  5. As soon as you activate a campaign, you will be able to see performance data. Even though you did your research ahead of time, research for Google AdWords never ends. You should continue monitoring your ads success day in and day out and you can easily pause campaigns and activate new ones so test out different keywords and ad copy until you find what is right. Continuously monitor impressions, clicks, click through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), cost (how much of your budget you have spent), conversions and conversion ratio. Generally, CTRs between 1% and 4% are normal.
  6. Use location targeting. If you have a small business target the areas near your business rather than the whole country. You can also use language targeting if that is appropriate for your company.
  7. Understand the different keyword match types. This will save you from having your ads show up when you don’t want them to and preventing a wasted budget. This is one of the most common mistakes on AdWords. Here are the keyword match types:
  • Exact match: [little black dress] shows only that keyword with no variation. If a user misspells the keyword or uses the plural form, your add will not show.
  • Phrase match: “little black dress” tells AdWords to show your add when your keyword is included in a search, with words before or after it. If you put two words in quotes your ad will not show when words are between your keywords. Phrase match also does not allow your ad to show if your keyword is spelled wrong.
  • Modified broad match: +little +black +dress tells Google to show your ad for the keywords, any misspellings, and in any order with other keywords before, after or in between keywords. You can use + in front of one keyword and not for another in the same ad using another command for the other or no command.
  • Broad match: Using no command prompts Google to show your ad for any keyword they consider relevant. Be careful with using broad match as your ad can be displayed for searches unrelated to your ad. Run a Search Query Report to see all of the keywords that displayed your ad to see what irrelevant keywords your ad is showing for. This is helpful for other keyword match types as well, but most important if you are using broad match and not seeing good results.
  1. Use negative keywords. Placing a minus (-) before a keyword tells Google specifically not to show your ad for any query that word is used in. You should regularly run Search Query Reports to determine what negative keywords you should be using.
  2. Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI): this command automatically places the keyword that was searched into the ad to help the ad stand out. To use DKI you have to type your keyword like this: {KeyWord: little black dress}. You can have a word before the DKI such as order, buy, get, want or anything that fits with the inserted keyword. If the search is too big Google will use the default keyword.
  3. Before you activate a campaign you should categorize your keywords into categories based on who would search for each keyword. You can use the categories buyers, researchers, and browsers and decide who you are targeting based on the purpose of your ad is. If you realize you only want to target buyers who already have their mind made up and are ready to make a purchase then don’t focus your keywords on searches someone doing research or browsing would use. Even if you do not use these categories you should organize your keywords into ad groups and campaigns.

The Transition From Outbound to Inbound Marketing

The days of traditional outbound marketing of TV, radio, telemarketing, direct mail, trade shows and emails have come to an end. People have the capability of fast-forwarding through TV commercials, paying for commercial free radio apps, filtering their emails and throwing out direct mail without glancing at it. Traditional marketing is no longer an effective way to reach your target market. The new internet era that we live in has flipped our idea of marketing. Marketers now can have almost limitless information about potential customers and use it to efficiently communicate their message. The best way to reach your target market today is to put an end to traditional outbound marketing and focus your energy on inbound marketing.

In “Inbound Marketing: Attract, Engage, and Delight Customers Online” by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, they explore the transition from traditional outbound marketing to inbound and argue that inbound marketing cannot simply be a sales-oriented message. They explain that since the internet allows information to spread so easily, it makes traditional marketing that much more competitive. Most companies’ websites are solely one-way sales-oriented messages that they call a “megaphone” and they suggest that your website should instead be a collaborative “hub” that fosters two-way communication. However, they also encourage marketers to focus 75% of their time and energy outside of their website on their brand, industry and competitors, in general. This outside focus should drive customers to your site. The authors preach to the many marketers who feel the need to redesign their site, to instead “rethink it.” Moreover, they discuss adding a blog with compelling content, focusing on Google, industry blogs, and, of course, social media.

Halligan and Shah speak from experience as they begin to explain how to complete the transition from outbound to inbound marketing for a company of any size. The most important part, they claim, is having a “remarkable value proposition,” because only remarkable ideas spread quickly. They encourage out of the box thinking in order to think across traditional boundaries of your marketplace and ignore existing unwritten rules to become the best in your industry. If you can’t be the best in your industry, then they suggest that you redefine your market narrowly, with their example of a left-handed monkey wrench manufacturer, supplying only left-handed plumbers. After creating a remarkable value proposition, they suggest creating remarkable content. They explain that they refer to it as REMARKable because it should be “worthy of other people’s remarks.” Every marketer should consider themselves half marketer and half publisher these days and encourage other members of your company to also create remarkable content.

After reading their chapter “Get Found in the Blogosphere,” it’s hard to imagine why every company doesn’t already have a blog, considering how many benefits you can reap from it. Not only will a blog establish your company “as a thought leader in your market,” it will change your website from an “online brochure” to a collaborative “hub,” where customers are encouraged to engage with your company and ultimately improve the likelihood that customers will find your site via Google and other sites. Something that surprised me is that they claimed that the most successful bloggers recommend spending half of your time writing the blog and half of your time creating a title. Your title has to catch people’s attention in half a second, which seems like an almost impossible feat. The best part of blogs is that they continue to deliver value over and over again, whereas paid ads only deliver value while you pay for them.

As someone proficient in internet marketing, I found myself unimpressed with their chapters on social media and Google AdWords, however they would be helpful for someone entirely new to the internet marketing field. Halligan and Shah did impress me when they began talking about using free software and tools to bring customers to your site. In the earlier chapters they suggested going to grader.com to get a free report evaluating your website, which I did, twice over the course of reading their book. Of course, grader.com is Halligan and Shah’s free tool to get you to their site and on their HubSpot email list. Nicely done!

The whole process of inbound marketing is a trial and error process, which they assert, “the key to inbound marketing is to iterate and improve.” Trying out different compelling calls-to-action, such as webinars, white papers, ebooks, expert consultation, free demos and contests are a great way to find the most efficient strategy. Testing different landing pages until you find the one with the best conversion rate is another trial and error process. Additionally, they explain that the quality of leads is more important than the quantity of leads and that you should create a criteria and course of action to take with each kind you classify.

Halligan and Shah refer to John Wanamaker’s saying, “Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half,” to express how far marketing has come. Today, you know exactly what someone typed in Google to get to your website; there is no longer any guessing about which part of your marketing is successful and which is not. And the best part is that you have the ability to change it and measure the results instantly. In my opinion, the second best part is that, according to the authors, inbound marketing leads are about 60% less expensive than outbound marketing leads. They go in depth on how to hire inbound marketing savvy employees and how to watch your competition. They end the book with some motivation and a sense of urgency that you needed to start inbound marketing yesterday!

Overall, it was a good, quick read. The short and info-packed chapters with an example in each helped keep it interesting. It was a bit repetitive but got the message across. I would suggest that any businessperson read it, who is unfamiliar with internet marketing. It is less helpful if you already know a lot about the industry, but there is still a lot for most people to learn from it! The big picture is that it creates a sense of urgency that you need to go out and learn how to begin inbound marketing and it teaches you a lot about how to start and even advises you to be patient and perseverant until you see results.

 

Halligan, Brian, and Dharmesh Shah. Inbound Marketing: Attract, Engage, and Delight Customers Online. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2014. Print.

7 Social Media Sites For Businesses & How To Use Them

In order to communicate your intended message with your target audience, you have to use the right medium. There are many companies that create a bunch of social media accounts and then post the exact same message on each one. Many sites, like Hoot Suite, have made being able to post the exact same thing on many social media sites with the click of a button very convenient. However, as convenient as it may be, these people don’t understand that different social media sites are intended for different purposes and therefore people don’t go on each one looking for the same information. These sites are specialized and have different users or simply different functions. Here’s a quick run through of the most important social media sites for your business to be on and how to use them to effectively communicate:

  1. Facebook: There are over 1.39 billion monthly active users on Facebook and 890 million daily users; this means that you are making a big mistake if your company is not on Facebook. You have access to Facebook Insights, their free analytics platform, if you are managing a fan page on Facebook. Facebook is a place to post almost anything: blogs, pictures, videos, etc. Every business should be on Facebook, no matter the industry. The metrics you should pay attention to on Facebook are total likes, reach (organic, paid, and viral), engaged users, “People talking about this,” and likes, comments, and shares by post.
  1. Twitter: With 288 million monthly active users on Twitter and 500 million Tweets sent per day, Twitter is another site that your business cannot afford to ignore. Twitter has a 140-character cap on all Tweets so it isn’t ideal for posting blogs directly but it is effective to post what your blog is about and the link. 80% of Twitter active users are accessing it from mobile devices and 77% of accounts are outside of the U.S. Metrics to pay attention to on Twitter include, followers, retweets, replies, and clicks and click-through-rate. Twitter does not provide it’s own analytics but there are many sites that do.
  1. YouTube: We all know that Google is the largest search engine, but did you know that YouTube is the second largest? YouTube has 3 billion searches per month and is bigger than Bing, Yahoo, and AOL combined. Obviously YouTube is specifically for videos but people go on to see videos about products before they use them or to learn things, both of which your company could be doing. Like Facebook, YouTube has an analytics platform that tracks views, channel subscribers, likes/dislikes, comments, favorites, and shares.
  1. Google+: G+ has an impressive 235 million monthly active user base after only launching in 2011. You just need to have a gmail account to be on G+ and once you have created that you simply follow people and add them to your circles (family, friends, acquaintances, following, or create your own). You can target who will be able to see each post by selecting the circles. G+ was Google’s attempt at an alternate to Facebook and similarly you can post anything to it and it is integrated with all of the rest of Google’s numerous features. Unlike Facebook, G+ doesn’t offer analytics so you just have to manually track the number of people who have put you in a circle, +1’s (the equivalent of a like) and comments.
  1. LinkedIn: There are 332 million users on LinkedIn, including 107 million in the U.S. alone. If you have a business you should have a business page on LinkedIn and you and your employees should connect their profiles to it. Paid users can see exactly who views their profile, which is a helpful resource, although you do not need to pay to have a personal or business profile without this feature. Companies use it to look for clients and potential clients use it to look for companies, so do yourself a favor and make you company a profile if you haven’t already.
  1. Pinterest: 80% of Pinterest’s 70 million users are women, making it the ideal place to for fashion, food, design, and travel companies to post. Posts must be visually appealing, so if you’re posting blogs on Pinterest they have to have a great picture to catch people’s attention first. Pinterest is yet to create an analytics platform so you have to manually track followers, likes, repins, and comments.
  1. Instagram: With 300 million monthly users, Instagram surpassed Twitter after just four years after they launched the app in October 2010. Instagram is for sharing photos and videos less than 15 seconds long. It’s useful to be on Instagram if your company is in lifestyle, food, fashion, and luxury brands. Followgram is a great tool for tracking your most liked and commented on posts.

For example, the most effective way for a car company to communicate with social media users is to post different messages on different social media sites. They should post pictures of their cars on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and G+ and they could post links to blogs on Facebook, Twitter, G+ and LinkedIn. Videos could be posted on YouTube and G+, and short videos on Twitter and Instagram.

Thank you for reading! We appreciate feedback and invite you to subscribe to our site and follow us on Twitter @OrionHuntress

Internet Marketing Basics

Internet marketing is a lot like fishing. To catch the biggest fish you have to find the right place to go, use the right bait, and be patient. Change your ways until you find the right ones.

 

First, in internet marketing you have to decide what fish you want to catch. To get the “biggest fish” you have to start with what kinds of fish you want. Who is your target audience? What demographics can you target? Age? Gender? Income? Education? Greener consumers? Are you targeting businesses or customers? Different segments of the market want different things. You have to base your target market on the product you are providing. Do some market research and find out exactly who your target market is.

 

Once you establish your target market you have to decide on how you will get them to your website. What is your bait? Google Adwords? Facebook? Twitter? Blogs? Instagram? Deciding on what platform to use is the hardest part of marketing. Look at what other companies similar to yours are doing, do some competitor analysis! See what works and what doesn’t for them and learn from their mistakes.

 

Let’s say you start an online clothing company. Your target audience is fashionable women aged 18-30. How do you get your message (“go to my website and buy my clothes!!”) to your target market? Think about these women, what apps and websites do they go on regularly? Pinterest, Instagram, Etsy, Facebook, Twitter, etc. If your target market is young women you wouldn’t put your ads on ESPN’s app or website.

 

Online marketing doesn’t happen overnight, it takes time, it takes adjusting and readjusting. Be responsive. Improve based on what works and what doesn’t.

 

Start with your product or service. Think about what fish you want to catch. Figure out how to catch those fish.