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How to Maximize Your Return on Search Advertising Spend?

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

The internet has become the primary media outlet to find, research and buy products and services today.  Media buyers and planners are constantly debating on what is the most effective way to target these audiences with digital advertising that will result in the highest conversions maximizing the return on advertising spend (ROAS) for their advertising clients. A few digital advertising agencies have the opinion that search advertising is the most effective means of  targeting audiences based on consumer intent resulting in conversions while some are of the belief that search engine optimization is the most cost effective sales channel.

However, performance marketing must mix both strategies to achieve desired results. Large and Small businesses should use  a combination of pay per click advertising and search engine optimization to drive conversions across the entire sales funnel.

The long tail

The great recession has compelled large and small businesses to operate within tight budgets and cut costs. Though pay per click ads help increase traffic to the website and have demonstrated a return on investment for most businesses, they have become expensive. One way businesses can get higher returns from PPC ads is by focusing on the long tail and determing user intent.  Long tail keywords cost less as there are fewer competitiors bidding on them and they can also help in determining user intent so the advertiser can reflect it in their dynamic ad copys and landing pages resulting in higher conversions at lower cost per clicks.

Augmenting pay per click with SEO

 Any digital advertising strategy should be augmented with relevant keyword rich website content. This strategy automatically improves the seo ranking of the website. This enables large and small businesses to appear for relevant search terms in the organic search engine results pages thereby increasing the exposure to potential target customers.

Many new age, online advertising agencies recognize the value of this combined approach and offer a combination of search engine optimization and keyword selection services to clients.

All clicks are not customers

All PPC clicks are not the same. Large and small businesses must recognize this fact and keep it in mind when building and managing search marketing campaigns. Digital advertising companies help businesses in building online campaigns by educating them on the different  tactics based on the clients objectives. For example, if an antiques business bids on the phrase that includes the location of the store + ”antiques”  to target local area traffic only, the ad copy can still appear and generate clicks that are related to users looking for antiques information or jobs but are not buyers of antiques products. Digital advertising companies can track the keyword phrases used by majority of the users searching on the antiques related keywords and help identify the buyers based on the keyword  intent so the client can maximize its return on advertising spend. 

Smart businesses look to continuously trim their advertising waste by improving their profit margins by incorporating data to evlove their digital advertising strategies.

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Pay Per Click Marketing

Monday, June 28th, 2010

Pay per click marketing is one of the best performing marketing strategies today. Internet trends are changing at a rapid pace. Digital media is innovating and improvising every day to deliver results, reducing advertising waste – synonymous with traditional media channels such as TV, Radio and Print.

Internet marketing in the late 1990s is child’s play compared to the complexities involved in it today. Advertising agencies should be in sync with changing trends in internet consumption, digital technology and media optimization techniques to guarantee better results. Businesses that hire internet marketing companies should also understand the basic essentials of digital marketing.

What is Cost Per Thousands (cpm)?

In the beginnings of the internet era, internet publishers and advertising companies charged customers on cost-per-thousand impressions also known as CPM. CPM pricing is calculated based on the number of times an advertisement is seen online, irrespective of whether anyone clicks on it or not. CPM pricing is a holdover from traditional advertising and not a very accountable means of measuring the efficacy of the advertisement resulting in 50% or more of your marketing dollars being wasted.

What is Cost Per Click (cpc)?

With digital media, we can now track and measure online advertising. It has made Cost per click (CPC) pricing the most popular alternative to CPM based pricing for advertisers as the advertiser can now pay only when a user clicks on the ad copy and lands on the advertisers website. This has resulted in better efficacy of measuring the advertising spend and tracking the return on investment from it.

What is Cost Per Acquisition (cpa)?

Cost per acquisition (CPA) pricing is based on the number actions that are completed on the advertisers website. Advertisers pay for the user actions that resulted in a conversion such as a sale, registration or a lead form completion. CPA is a suitable option for advertisers that are looking to mitigate the risk by paying for cost of sales. However, cpa pricing is more expensive than buying cpc and cpm based inventory.

In general, internet marketing agencies and media buying organizations are able to buy digital media inventory based on CPC, CPM and CPA pricing, or a combination of the three to best suit the requirements of their clients.

Increasing complexity of pay-per-click marketing

There are many search engine marketing companies in the market, and it is a challenge for any one company to prove itself better than its counterparts. The best pay per click advertising firms keep in step with changing internet trends and optimize based on the changes taking place in the industry. With so many developments taking place on the internet every day, even the most competitive search marketing experts can miss out on a market trend and lose out on an important opportunity.

Qualities to look for in a pay-per-click marketing firm

Pay per click advertising is part of the new digitial media landscape where there is frequent innovation and rapid changes. Delivering performance and effective results in this dynamic industry is a full time job today. For small and mid sized businesses that want to take advantage of this performance based digital marketing and media they need to consider partnering with a pay per click marketing firm that can deliver desired results. An innovative pay per click marketing strategy can help small and mid sized businesses stay ahead of competition by employing the latest techniques in digital media and internet marketing.

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Search Engine Marketing – Looking Beyond The Big Two?

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

When a business plans to launch a search engine marketing campaign, it usually targets three search engines – Google, Yahoo and Bing . No surprises here because these search engines have a long history and proven track records. However, as Yahoo plans to outsource its search engine to Bing, we will soon be left with two major search engines – Google and Bing. This has caused search marketing companies to look beyond the big two for pay per click advertising.

The giants rule Search Marketing 

Many small search engines have entered the market with claims of being better than Google. However, they have never met up to standards or gained popularity. Google is the defacto standard for web search around the globe. It has over 70% share in the market and is still growing.  It is no wonder that in spite of high prices, search engine marketing firms prefer to tie up with Google than any other search engine.

Smaller search engines try to compete with the giants by launching different search algorithms and methodologies. Mahalo uses human editors. Like.com uses visual search. Some other search engines gaining popularity are Ask.com, cull, baidu, etc. However, they have not been able to capture crticial user adoption to make it attractive for pay per click advertising.

Vertical Search optimizes Search Marketing

A concept gaining popularity amongst search marketers  is “vertical search”. Vertical search can dramatically increase the effectiveness of a pay per click advertising campaign as compared with the broad-based searches conducted on Google, Yahoo and Bing. Vertical search means that the search engine searches only specific types of searches rather than the entire Web. Some examples of vertical search engines are TradeSeam, Kayak, MedStory, Pricegrabber, DentaProducts.net, Indeed etc.

Search Marketers should target niche markets

Google and Bing have a broad-based scope when it comes to web search. The internet is growing every day and web search results are often at variance with the search topic. Vertical search engines that target niche markets can help businesses get more value out of search marketing.

The web content may soon reach unmanageable levels even for the major search engine giants. When that day arrives, pay per click marketing companies that have vertical search engine domain expertise will have a compettive advantage over their counterparts.

Lower Cost of Acquisition

Google started by offering  pay per click ads for 1 US cent. As it grew, so did the cost of search advertising on its search engine network. If a vertical search engine is performing well, businesses should consider using it to lower the cost per acquisition of its overall marketing spend to drive a higher return on investment (ROI)

Alhough the search advertising market is ruled by the big two  - Google and Bing - businesses should test and allocate the performance of vertical search engines. Vertical search engines may have less traffic than the big two but their search algorithms are geared towards a specific industry that can result in much better returns for your pay per click search marketing  budget.

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Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Pay-per-click search engine marketing is the most effective direct marketing tactic of all times and revenue predictions show it. According to the data findings of the 2009 State of the Market survey of advertisers and agencies by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), SEM industry revenues are expected to grow from $12.2 billion in 2009 to $26.1 billion in 2013.  As online marketing gradually edges out traditional print, TV and radio advertising, businesses cannot afford not to include search engine marketing in their marketing mix anymore.

Managing an SEM campaign is no simple task. Businesses should consider hiring professional search engine marketing companies to work on their SEM campaigns as it involves qualitative and quantitative assessments that need specialized pay per click search marketing skills and experience.

 

The expertise that Search Engine Marketing companies bring are the following:

  • Assessing the needs of the business’ potential customers and the most relevant keywords to include in the pay per click campaigns.
  • Identifying the most effective pay per click search engine marketing strategies and tactics based on the business’ objectives such as day parting, hourly biding, search vs. content network etc.
  • Development of ppc bidding strategies on pay per click search engines by assessing key metrics such as return on investment (ROI), conversion rate, total revenue, ad position, placements etc.
  • Optimization of web page designs to increase quality score on pay per click search engines. Different pay per click search marketing systems have different quality score and ppc bidding algorithms and it important to take all the right actions to improve the sales conversions. Search engine marketing agencies will also know how to create ad groups, configure  redirects to ensure the pay per click ads are approved by the respective search engines.
  • Tracking and analyzing the results of pay per click campaign.
  • Improving the conversions. An experienced search engine marketing agency understands that getting traffic to the website is not enough. The traffic should lead to sale conversions. Search engine marketers can improve the web design to maximize conversions.

Search Engine Marketing is a specialized field that needs pay per click advertising expertise. Traditional agencies have the creative skills, but not the technical expertise. Web search engine marketing needs both of these, and an updated knowledge of the ever-changing pay click search engines algorithms.

Businesses should hire search marketing services to optimize their pay per click search engine marketing campaigns. Search engine marketing companies can help increase the effectiveness of search marketing by increasing the relevant traffic to the business’ website and improving sales conversions. Pay per click search engines are a powerful media, and businesses should make the most of this opportunity.

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Oscar Nominations for Best Small Business Opportunities

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

We’ll know Sunday night whether it is “Avatar” or “The Hurt Locker” or a dark horse that takes home the Oscar for Best Picture. Starting a small business can feel like starring in an Oscar winning movie. By pouring your heart into your own business, you can build your own skills while influencing your supporting cast and convincing critics of your performance. But to be a winner, you’ll have to overcome the challenges presented by the market, by offering the best possible product or service to the right customers. Of course, you won’t have the luxury of dissolving away to a montage during the toughest parts of your journey.

Entrepreneurs predict five strong oscar worthy nominations for the best small business idea in 2010, along with their inspiration from the silver screen:

1. Athletic Trainer

The demand for freelance athletic trainers has grown in many cities where former gym members need help with home workouts. Retired athletes perform well in this field, where professionals often earn over $42,000 annually. With help from a web site design firm, you can create a content rich website with workout videos, exercise tips and techniques, client testmonials and even allow for your clients to login and monitor the progress of their own workouts.

Inspiration from 1976 Oscar For Best Picture: Rocky

If a parade of sequels has dulled the impact of the original Rocky, revisit 1976’s Best Picture. Of course, you might not have to work your training clients as hard as Mickey pushes Rocky. You’ll just have to help them choose to be “climbers” instead of “tomatoes.”

2. Concierge Service

Overbooked executives often need help running errands and making reservations. Stressed-out parents crave assistance with child day care scheduling and social planning. Concierge services charge between $30-$50 per hour to help both of these market segments manage their time more effectively. Credit card processing services allows concierges to charge fees to clients automatically upon the completion of each task.

Inspiration from 1956 Oscar For Best Picture:  Around the World in Eighty Days

One of the splashiest films ever to win Best Picture, this 1956 adventure features literature’s most celebrated valet: Passepartout. You may never have to fight a bull or climb the ropes of a hot air balloon for your clients. But, like Passepartout does for Phineas Fogg, you’ll frequently save the day.

3. Freelance Writer

Despite pleas from peddlers of get-rich-quick formulas, few paying markets exist for travel reviews or daily musings. However, freelance copywriters can earn $48,000 or more per year by generating quality content for clients. Office Equipment leasing can help outfit growing writing services with computers, scanners, fax machines, and other tools of the trade.

Inspiration from 1998 Oscar For Best Picture: Shakespeare in Love

Life as a writer has always had its challenges, especially if you follow the fanciful story of 1998’s Best Picture. The film projects modern writers’ biggest frustrations–from writers’ block to quarrels with clients–onto Elizabethan England’s creative community.

4. Career Counsellor

Career counsellors help clients navigate challenging professional decisions. E-commerce solutions allow clients to purchase career planning services ranging from access to executive jobs, automated tip sheets to live coaching sessions. This way, career counsellers can earn $40,000 or more per year matching job candidates with productive new careers.

Inspiration from 1970 Oscar For Best Picture: Patton

In today’s economy, it takes a commanding presence and visionary insight to get the most from people. It’s no surprise that the first few moments of 1970’s Best Picture, Patton, have become a visual cue for powerful leadership in business. Just don’t slap any of your customers–the film will show you why this could be a career-limiting move.

5. Nursing Home

More Americans than ever require at least occasional on-site assistance from trained medical professionals. Nurses, EMTs, and other graduates of medical training courses can earn $15-$20 per hour by helping patients recuperate from home. Online marketing campaigns including search engine optimization and pay per click can help you grow your small business quickly as users search for home based halthcare professionals for their ageing parents on Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Inspiration from 1975 Oscar For Best Picture: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Don’t take this particular suggestion as inspiration, exactly. Instead, review Louise Fletcher’s Oscar-winning portrayal of the vindictive Nurse Ratched as an example of how not to offer patient care. 1975’s Best Picture remains at the top of critics’ lists of all-time top films for its darkly humorous view of patient-practitioner relationships.

Finding The Best Supporting Actors and Actresses

Starting a business during a recession might sound crazy. However, many of America’s most successful companies actually launched as small businesses during economic downturns. As larger companies lay off experienced workers, you can use the current economic climate to attract skilled talent who can help you make an even bigger impact on your customers. By filling a high-demand niche in your community and by running a frugal organization, you can set up your new business to win its own oscar worthy awards.

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How to Build a Successful B2B Lead Generation Pipeline

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

B2B spending on online lead generation is anticipated to grow at 17% through 2012. Though we have more b2b lead generation options today than ever before, online b2b media sites are not doing enough to take advantage of this projected growth in spending. There is not enough innovation in business lead generation products. The media channels are weak, measurement capabilities are frequently lacking and b2b companies do not have the resources to nurture, score and track the performance of the lead generation programs.

Here are the 3 keys to building a successful business lead generation pipeline:

  1. Objectives – When examining the lack of B2B lead generation success using online media, one of the core hurdles I have found is that B2B marketing executives are unsure how to measure, score and nurture their lead generation pipeline. Sure, b2b lead generation strategy is different for every industry and business, but I would argue that every B2B marketer needs to define the objective of their lead generation programs before spending a single dollar on them.
  2. Strategies – Once the overall objectives have been determined the marketer needs to identify the right media strategies and mix. Each industry and each niche will have a set of online media sources,types of programs and tools. You need to first identify the media sources and mix for your business even before allocating the marketing budget to them. Unless you spend the time to identify the media sources and mix that are required to achieve the overall objective, half the money you spend on the online media will be wasted; the trouble is, you won’t know which half…
  3. Measurability – Finally, B2B marketers need to track the performance of their lead generation campaigns based on the objectives. For example, if the marketing objective is to reduce cost of sales, the marketer needs to able to measure the sales conversions by media source to determine the return on investment (ROI). On the other hand, if the objective is to create product or brand awareness. Then, I would argue that there are more effective ways to achieve your marketing objective, including standing up a website, section or portal with videos, webcasts, relevant content etc. and driving traffic to it via pay per click or SEO.
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Pay Per Click vs. Banner Advertising

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

Both  paid search (also known as pay per click) and banner advertising (also known as display advertising)  are effective in increasing in-store and online revenues by reaching customers at different points in the buying cycle. However, banner advertising helps create brand awareness while pay per click has shown better direct response results as it can be targeted based on the users interests. But, when these marketing strategies are used in combination the results improve substantially.

Display advertising is used to promote business products and services and expose more people to the brand name. Surveys show that people who are exposed to the name of the business and products search for the brand and segment terms more often than people who have not viewed the banner advertisement. Searches on the business name have been proven to increase by almost 123%, when the name has been highlighted in the display advertisement.

Surveys also show that people exposed to display ads are more likely to click on organic and paid search results linked to that business’ website. Display advertising is also effective in keeping a business name in surfers’ minds when they are looking for a product or service that was promoted by that business. A whopping 52% of internet users respond to banner advertising and 27% search for a product by brand.

Pay per click is more effective for direct marketing campaigns where the marketer’s objective is to get a response from the user. Pay per click advertising can be targeted by selecting the keywords for which advertisers would like their ads to appear in search results, including their website in the ad copy with a compelling call to action. Search engine optimization and pay-per-click search engine marketing are performance based marketing strategies for advertisers that are looking for a Return On Investment  from their advertising spend.

To conclude, both banner advertising and pay per click advertising are extremely effective. However, display ads serve brand advertiser’s needs better than paid search while pay per click search marketing addresses direct marketer’s response needs better than display advertising. But, both these online marketing strategies can be implemented together to maximize the efficacy of your marketing objectives such as increasing web traffic to your website, improving sales conversions and getting qualified business leads. And small businesses should look to work with search engine marketing companies to shift their marketing budgets online in 2010.

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