Convert them today, retain them tomorrow

In the world of online marketing, we thought it was about time to discuss some key metrics, as metrics are the tools we should be using to refine and drive your marketing process.

We discussed in our last post the importance of strategic marketing, and how the knowledge of technology alone doesn’t cut it. This is our short list of metrics we believe “keep it strategic.”

Conversions

A conversion is simply a way of measuring that your marketing efforts are effective. Conversion code is placed at the bottom of the page you want a user to see, and you can track them from the source activity to the action you wanted them to take on the site. For example, if you wanted someone to sign up for a newsletter, you’d put the code on the “thank you for submitting your info” page, so you can differ from people who actually signed up, versus people who just viewed the sign up page. It is absolutely essential to track conversions. Why? It’s the way to track your marketing ROI. You can see what your best performing activities are, shift budget to better performing activities, and realize potential.

I also spoke briefly about conversions in one of my recent posts: Strategic Marketing: It’s Not Just Making it Look Pretty!. However, I want to offer some examples of how you can create conversions on your website.

• Visit to a key page on your website: In this conversion type, you want to drive a visitor to go to a key page. Maybe this page contains information about a product and you are hoping to provide information on a regular basis, so that, the user comes back to your site to take action again and again and eventually bookmarks your page/site.
• Event registration: This type of conversion requires a visitor to sign up for an event. Keep in mind, an event can be an online event such as a webinar. Regardless of what the event is you still require registration information from the registrant. This builds your in-house database which you can repurpose for other marketing efforts such as direct mail and email marketing. Additionally, you’re gaining valuable insight into the interests of your site visitors/prospectes. Those that attend the event can further be marketed to with the potential of a sales conversion being much higher as they’ve already showed extensive interest.
• Completion of an online form: This is probably the most popular type of conversion. You’ll see examples of this as “contact us’ form, forms required to download white papers, brochures, request more information/quotes, etc. Again, the visitor willingly provides information which helps build your in-house database.
• Online purchase: If you’re selling products directly from your website, this conversion is the holy grail! A good understanding of how the user gets to the purchase page, why they got there, and how we can get them back there again is essential. Also, thinking about up-sell opportunities is very important at this stage. You can gauge all of this through conversion tracking.

When designing (or redesigning) your website, think about the actions you want your visitors to take and funnel them to take those actions. Implement tracking analytics and studying your website’s performance as told by your visitor’s actions and movement around your site. Adjust and refine to increase conversions.

Going forward, make a conscious effort to understand:

• What you want your website visitors to do (Convert!)
• Make it appealing and easy for a visitor to convert
• Track, adjust and refine!

In our next post, we’ll discuss the idea of website traffic – understanding where it comes from, how we understand it, and how we can use it to our benefit.

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Strategic Marketing: It’s Not Just Making it Look Pretty!

Pay-Per-Click: Work or Waste?

So I just came from a sales call and the prospect is a very successful business man who runs a very successful business. He’s tried his hand at online marketing, namely Google Adwords pay-per-click (PPC) and was “soured.” He claimed the leads coming from these two campaigns weren’t converting and the ROI just wasn’t there. I truly believed him. But I was there to change his mind. Don’t get my wrong. I don’t want to sell anyone anything that isn’t right for them but I am a PPC evangelist and to answer my own question, IT DOES WORK!!!! It works well……………if it’s done right!

Everyone from Verizon/Idearc to Yellow Book to ATT are getting into the Google Adwords space (because their products are dying and they have no choice) but I’ve found none of them do it “right.” I’ve also found that very few (okay, I haven’t found one yet) business owners who try their hand at it or have their nephew run it for them do it “right” either. Thus, their budget is quickly exhausted by unqualified clicks. Don’t mistake “clicks” for leads! They’re not the same.

So what does “done right” mean? Here are a few key measurements that I use to deliver a positive ROI to my PPC clients. 1) Track conversions. Conversions are not leads they are actual people who clicked through and took some sort of action (filled out a form, called, requested a quote). 2) Set positions. Your ad shouldn’t appear in a position below #3 on the first search page. 3) Quality score. Drive your traffic to pages on your site that are highly relative to your keywords. 4) Dayparts. With limited PPC budgets, use phone numbers in ads to reduce clicks (this is the only form of marketing where impressions are FREE). Also, turn campaigns on and off to fit the times/days/week/months of your sales cycle as well as when most of your audience is online. 5) Geotarget. I constantly see ads for companies that are in California that clearly don’t service my area. WASTE OF MONEY! 6) Trim the fat. Your keyword list will shrink over time. Eliminate keywords that are not converting and have limited overall traffic. Focus your budget on keywords that convert. This will increase the frequency of your ads and fuel what’s working. In the end, all of these steps will optimize your budget, increase qualified leads and return a positive ROI.

Yes! PPC does work - when done “right!”

Have you run a campaign that was a bust? Let me hear about it. How about those of you out there seeing positive return? What’s the highest return rate you’re seeing?

SEO vs PPC

Ahhh, the old search engine optimization (SEO) vs. pay-per-click (PPC) debate! Love this one. Let’s put it this way, if you’re a marketer and you’re telling people that pay-per-click (PPC) you have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s clear you have no idea how PPC works or the benefits of it and if you claim that it’s "expensive" that just solidifies my point.

PPC, if done right (and that’s the key) can be one of the most effective forms of direct response marketing out there. Think about it. Someone is thinking about buying your product. He/She sits down at the computer and searches relative keywords. Your ad appears (among your competitors). Because your ad has been positioned within the top three spots, its visible to the. They read it and because it is a keyword rich ad with a strong call to action, they click through to your site. Now, that person who sought you out is on your site! Now, your site has to do its job and convert that person into a lead/sale. With conversion code tracking, you track that person from the keyword they searched to find you to the ad they clicked on (because you should be rotating and testing ads with different calls-to-action) to the final lead or sale. Now, if you narrow your keyword list over time based on the words that are coverting into sales and leads and eliminate those just costing you money, how could you not produce a positive ROI?! So, again, if you’re running a PPC campaign the RIGHT WAY, it WILL work!

SEO’ers….while I believe in SEO as a form of marketing as well (when done right), you cannot argue that your form is less expensive and more effective. It’s not! It can be as effective as PPC but we both know the time and money investment it takes so stop kidding yourselves and small businesses and give them the right solution. Not the one that is most comfortable to you! If you don’t offer PPC. Call me. If you do, make sure you’re doing it the RIGHT WAY!

Would love to hear from you SEO’ers! Love a great, professional debate. Everyone wins from it. Let me hear from you!

The fine balance between technology and people.

I had a conversation this weekend with a Navy colleague, a reservist, who owns his own business. He was asking me how to get his new website listed higher in the search engine rankings. I explained multiple ways from natural seo to pay-per-click as well as some easy, obvious things he can do. First I mentioned to pick a URL that is descriptive of the types of services he offers. He responded that his URL was his firstlastname.com. He went on to say that as an artist (he is a photographer) that he was told people resonate more with the artist than general terms like "photography," etc. This brought me to an interesting point that I feel compelled to explain.

While it is true that people (his potential clients) might respond more to the artist’s name, search engines don’t care what his name is. Not to be harsh but the lesson here is to understand the balance between people and technology. Of course you want to give your potential clients what they want and deliver it in the way they want it. But you also need to give the search engines what they need to deliver your content to your audience online.

He can have his cake and eat it too! I told him to keep his firstlastname.com URL and put it on his business cards, etc but buy another URL, for example, GreatPhotography.com and redirect it to his current website. This way, he can brand himself with the potential clients he meets and can give the search engines what they need to help his website rankings.

Keep in mind, this is one very small thing he can do and it won’t guarantee great results but its a start. Investing in PPC or natural SEO is well worth it. Marry that with social networking and pick an online marketing vendor that does it well and you can’t fail!

Would love your comments or experiences! Comment her or feel free to contact me directly at meg@vhmarketing.com.

Until next week, this is Meg Ferguson from Vision House Marketing saying have an effective and efficient day!

SEO makes more sense with Geographic Targeting

Increasingly the Internet is being used as a tool for finding local resources. Not just for finding information or buying products online, but you can use it to find homes for sale in your neighborhood, local independent insurance agents, local retail stores and local law and accounting firms for example. It is becoming increasingly important to keep geo-targeting in mind when optimizing for search engines. It makes sense to not only target by a searchers keyword but also by the searchers geographic location.

Hypothetically, let’s say I own a business located in Philadelphia, PA. I am looking for a public relations firm in order to help market my business to consumers living in the Philadelphia area. As you would expect, one of the first ways I look for a public relations firm is to search online using a major search engine such as Google. Because I am a small or medium sized business located in Philadelphia, it makes sense for me to do business with a public relation firm located in the Philadelphia area.

So the question is, how do I find a public relations firm located in the Philadelphia area? I can search on Google and type in “public relations firm” and I will get a list of thousands of public relation firms from all over the world. Since I want to hire a Philadelphia area public relations firm, the search does not give me what I am specifically looking for. Chances are, local companies are not found easily in this type of search. Internet users are becoming more savvy on how online searches are conducted and more and more users search using geographic locations. For our discussion, I would search using the keyword phrase “Philadelphia public relations firm,” which gives me a better listing of local public relation firms for which I am looking to conduct business.

The concept is fairly simple and makes sense; however, many websites do not include this concept as part of their Internet strategy. As a company or organization conducting the majority of business with local companies, how do you take advantage of the concept spelled out above? The idea is to develop your search engine optimization strategy around the concept of geo-targeting in order to increase your search engine rankings when a potential client or customer is searching for your product or service locally.

There are two ways to get your website listed on search engines such as Google. The most popular is organic search optimization, also known as natural search optimization; it is a continuing process allowing a web site to gain free listings within the major search engines without incurring ongoing marketing costs. If you are targeting clients within your local area, you may want to consider the following geo-targeted strategy.

Include the following:

Full address on all your WebPages, the higher on the page the better results.

Areas where you do business throughout your website copy

Geographic location in your title tags and Meta tags

Your city in the link text when linking from other sites to yours

Register for local search with the major search engines

The second way to get listed on search engines such as Google is through “pay per click” (PPC) campaigns. If you use PPC advertising, you pay each time one of your ads is clicked on a search engine. Google PPC marketing is called Google AdWords, which is located on the right side of a search page

How PPC (pay per click) works:

Register with a PPC system, provide credit card number and load your account.

Create one or more ads with title, body text and link to your appropriate WebPage.

Associate your important keywords with each ad.

Bid on each keyword, the more you bid the higher the listing.

The key for a local businesses using PPC is to take advantage of Geographic Targeting. Google allows marketers, using AdWords, to specify the geographic locations in which their ad will appear. For example a business in Boston that targets local companies can set up their campaign so that only people in their market area will see the ad. This makes a lot of sense because the Boston based company does not want to be charged because a person from Florida clicked on their ad. By taking advantage of geo-targeting the searcher from Florida will not see the ad.

Please visit http://www.philadelphia-marketing-directory.com to locate Philadelphia area marketing companies