Small Businesses, Stop Listening To the Insanity!

Okay..that’s it! I’m mad! Damn mad! I’m listening to prospective and existing clients alike vent about the garbage fed to them daily by marketing vendors who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about! In this economy (or any for that matter), you cannot waste a dime on ineffective and inefficient marketing! On or offline, more vendors than not will take your money and waste it! The key to any marketing campaign is conversions! Conversions! Conversions! Meaning, actual leads that turn into sales. Clicks don’t matter. Page ranks don’t matter. What matters is the effort spent results into sales.

I have a client who called me the other day concerned that their traffic to their website was less than they expected. Ironically, of the traffic they were getting (they’re a highly specific medical practice), they were seeing a 46% conversion rate! Meaning 46% of those who did come to the site as a result of our online marketing campaign turned into a legitimate lead! I had them go back and cross analyze those leads to sales (patients in this case). 20% turned into new patients!

The reason they called me? Another vendor was in to see them and sold them a load of crap with regards to page rank and traffic to their site! Once I showed them the actual - IMPORTANT - numbers, they were floored. I asked them to contact that vendor and challenge them with questions regarding their conversion tracking methodology. As suspected….they lied and said those numbers are not important.

I guess this entry is more for the lame vendors out there who got into this business because they saw their share of marketing budgets go toward online marketing but who have NO CLUE about marketing….learn marketing 101, and this space will be a nice place to compete! It will also be much more pleasant for small businesses in the Greater Philadelphia area. The less garbage they hear, the less insanity in the market place!

Small businesses, tell me about your marketing vendor experiences. Let’s hear the good, the bad, the ugly! You are in power now. It’s a nice position to be in! Use it…let’s hear from you! Comment on this posting!

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

Don’t Forget About Your Website. Make it Work!

I circulated a survey last week to my friends, colleagues, and clients asking their uses for social media. With all the hype about social media (and well deserved hype might I add), I wanted to gauge whether people were shifting their behaviors with regards to online fact finding. While most of the responses were no surprise, one question brought the most interesting results. When asked "Where do you go online to find out more about a company?," 100% of the respondents said "their website."

Okay, so these results didn’t split the atom and certainly don’t reflect the views of more than about 100 people but I found it most interesting. I fear that companies are starting to invest disproportionate amounts of time and money diving into the social networking world and neglecting their mainstay - their website. Don’t get me wrong, social networking is here to stay and should be a part of your marketing strategy but your website is still very important and it is still the "front door" to your business. It has to be maintained, updated, studied for visitor trends, and reflective at all times of your company’s products and/or services. But most of all, it has to work!

So what does that mean? A website that "works" means it compels people enough to take some sort of action whether it be they pick up the phone and call or fill out your contact us form or request a quote or sign up for your e-newsletter and/or coupons. A website that works is not static. It is not purely informative with pleasing colors and graphics. A website does not have to sell (unless you’re selling product directly from the site). A website is dynamic. It is engaging. It answers the question "why would I do business with this company as opposed to their competitor?" It provides just enough information to the visitor to prompt the visitor to act!

Listen, you’ve invested a lot of time and money not only into your site but into driving traffic to your site via all of your marketing efforts. Make sure your website "works!" It’s still the first place a potential customer/client will go to find out about you.

Only after you’ve created a website that works should you consider using tags, social networking bookmarks and ratings, blogs, and other forms of social networking along side your website. Hire a vendor that understands how all of these forms of marketing work together and you can’t lose!

For more helpful marketing tips like this, subscribe to this blog using your RSS reader! Also, please leave your comments!

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

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!

Pay-per-click ROI

So I’m still on my rant about the correct way to run/manage a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign and I’m finding that the majority of businesses that have a campaign running (either run internally or through a firm) not only don’t understand how the campaign should work but they don’t know what good looks like.

If you view a PPC campaign as a way to just driving traffic (aka: clicks) to your website, you’re probably spending money you don’t need to! If you’re happy with "just driving traffic to your website," then you’ll be satisfied with the big media moguls (Verizon, Idearc, Yellow Book, ATT, etc) out there offering this service and claiming to run an effective campaign for you.

I will say, that the big media moguls running these campaign do charge less in management fees but don’t get too excited. Even though you’ve set a monthly click budget with them, and they’re staying within it, I guarantee they’re not optimizing your campaign to maximize your budget.

What I mean by that is that they’re not tracking "conversions" - which are actual leads and go beyond just tracking clicks. They’re also not analyzing your data in such as way to determine which keywords are not only driving clicks but are actually converting into legitimate leads versus which ones are just costing you money in clicks.

I am classifying most PPC campaigns as DEFCON Alpha because these campaign basics are not being employed and PPC is getting a bad rap as a result. There are the nay-sayers out there - that PPC just costs you money for something that should be free. But let me tell you emphatically. I have over 15 years in strategic marketing experience and this could be the most effective and efficient form of marketing a company runs IF IT’S RUN RIGHT!  (I welcome comments from SEO’ers though)

Review your campaigns. Challenge the agency running it or revisit how you’re running it and remember I’m always available for questions. You can reach me at meg@vhmarketing.com

This is Meg Ferguson from Vision House Marketing, LLC saying "Have an efficient and effective day!"

Google Pay-Per-Click DEFCON Alpha!

If you have run, are running or are thinking about running a Google Adwords pay-per-click (PPC) campaign (or any PPC campaign for that matter), pay close attention! This could save you a lot of money!

I’d take the time to introduce myself but there’s no time. We’re in DEFCON Alpha and a lot of you out there are being affected!

As more and more “traditional media” based companies are getting into the PPC marketing space, I feel the utter frustration from business owners first-hand. I’m frustrated as well! There are just too many companies out there wasting your money! And I feel obligated to challege the PPC wannabes and rid the marketing world of those that are just out to collect your money.

Look, don’t get me wrong. We’re all out to make money and I don’t blame the large companies losing market share to online marketing to try to compete in this space. What I do take issue with is that they are bastardizing what could be one of the most effective and efficient forms of direct marketing out there (despite what natural SEO guys are saying - I’ll get into that debate later). So how do you know what a good Google Adwords PPC campaign looks like? Next time you sit down with a rep trying to sell you on an online PPC marketing campaign, ask them the following:

1. Can you tell me the estimated amount of clicks on a daily and monthly basis on a list of keywords relative to my business within the specific geographical area that I service?

2. Can you tell me the average cost-per-click that I’ll pay on a list of keywords relative to my business?

3. How do you determine what days/times to run my campaign?

4. To what pages on my site do you direct traffic to?

5. How do you measure the success of this campaign?

6. How often to I receive reports?

7. Do you disclose all the keywords, costs, and ads to me?

8. What is your set-up and management fee and how much of my budget is going to clicks?

9. Can you guarantee that when my ad appears, it will appear in the top 1-3 positions?

10. How do you choose the keywords for my campaign?

These are just 10 of MANY questions you should ask but a great start. Any company trying to sell you a PPC campaign should be able to answer every single one of these questions in detail. At no point, should the answer be “we can’t do that!”

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting answers to these questions and explaining what a successful PPC campaign looks like. Check back with me regularly! If you’re a small or medium or even large company running one of these campaigns, you don’t want to miss this!

This is Meg Ferguson from Vision House Marketing, LLC saying “Have an efficient and effective day!”