(can you identify the image? and no it’s not from Turkey)

PPC

PPC stands or pay-per-click, these are the ads that you see on the side or top of search engines such as Google, they are paid advertisements that you can target toward your audience. You can select to have your ads show up when people type in a particular keyword or phrase, that way you are showing them ads for something that they already want to see. For example if you sell ipods and someone types “ipod nano” into Google; you can make your ads show up for the phrase “ipod nanos.” PPC is a great way to target large groups of people on either a broad or niche level. PPC works on a bidding system therefore you bid against competitors who are seeking to show up for the same terms that you are. It’s easy to lose money in PPC if your visitors aren’t converting. Meaning you pay money for them to click on your site but then they just leave, so you’re paying for ads and not getting a return. That being said, a properly optimized PPC campaign can be very effective, but the overall conversion rates are usually quite low.

SEO

I’m going to put up another post about the multi facets of SEO but for now I will keep it simple. SEO is the process and strategy for ranking well for a particular keyword or phrase. For example if you sell ibm laptops then you probably want to rank well in search engines for terms like “ibm laptops, ibm laptop, ibm notebook, etc.” This is where SEO comes into play in making sure you rank well for your target phrases. Contrary to what people may tell you, SEO is not based on any relationship with Google, if a company calls you and tells you that they can rank you #1 for a term because they have a relationship with Google, they are lying. SEO seeks to understand how a search engines scores, evaluates, and ranks a page (and relevancy) and is actually far more complex then what the so called SEO “experts” say. SEO is an extremely effective and powerful way to get traffic and conversions by showing up for target keyterms. The top 4 spots are usually the most trafficked, so if you sell ibm laptops you want to use SEO to make sure that you show up in the top four spots for your terms. SEO can be used to go after niches or broad topics. Ideally you want to have every page on your site target 1-2 keywords or phrases that way your pages are extremely targeted towards your users. There is no point in having your Policy page show up #1 for “ibm laptops” if people are looking to make a purchase. I’ve been involved in SEO strategy consulting for many years and now work with a team of Technical SEOs to provide SEO strategy to clients from around the world.

Social Media

Social media is about building relationships with your visitors or consumers. You don’t want to have people just come to your site and leave. You want to interact with them to find out what they want and what they need. If you build a relationship with your users they will become your best customers and your best brand evangelists. When talking about online marketing a lot of people neglect the social media aspect which is a mistake. The whole marketing industry is based upon relationships, understanding your users, and giving them what they want. You must have the two way interaction with your visitors in order to have a complete and effective online marketing strategy.

This was meant to be a high level overview of three powerful online marketing tools. Just to recap, we have PPC which is targeted advertising, we have SEO which is ranking well in search engines for your desired keyterms or phrases, and we have social media for building relationships with the people that visit your site. Together these three online marketing tools can come together to form a killer online marketing strategy. If you can run an effective advertising campaign through PPC while capturing the audience search for your product or service through SEO while simultaneously building relationships with your visitors, then you will have a very effective online marketing strategy that is sure to yield positive results.

What else would you ad to the mix? Do you have another powerful online marketing tactic or tool that I missed?

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img source

First off let me preface this question by mentioned that I have a very strong background in SEO and this question spawned from many client discussions that I have had.

I ask this question because it is a good way to start thinking about your business as a whole. What does your company do? What drives the most business? Where are you located? What is your market? I know there are all sorts of key phrases that your company probably wants to rank for but for the sake of argument, if you could only pick one phrase to rank for what would it be and why?

I want you to really think about this for a moment. Think about your audience, think about your target market, and think about your geographic location. If you are a Los Angeles based hypnotherapist then why would you want to rank for “hypnotherapy?” If you are a retail shoe store in San Francisco then why would you want to rank for “shoes?” If you sell refurbished Dell Laptops then why would you want to rank for “laptop?” Do these general terms really describe your business or product offering? If so, then e-mail me because you’re probably in some serious trouble.

Now instead of trying to rank for the most general terms in the world why not go after something that’s a bit more geared toward your market? Such as, “hypnotherapy in Los Angeles,” or “San Francisco shoe store,” or “Refurbished Dell laptops?” If you specialize in a particular niche market, either geographically or industrially (or other) then that is what you need to be ranking for. The reality is that you can’t always rank #1 for your desired keyterm or phrase so you need to think of ways that you can still rank well while going after your target audience. You do this by going after more specific terms that pertain to you business.

Here’s a little test for you, go into Google and type in the general term for your business; let’s say “shoes.” Notice, that you get 400,000,000 search results. Now type in something a bit more targeted towards your business, let’s say “San Francisco shoe store.” Now, the search results drop to 939,000. This is your target market; this is what you need to be going after. Before you go out there trying to conquer the world for general terms, put some thought into what it is you really want to rank for, believe me it is going to make a world of difference.

If you want to increase your sales then you need to use a much more targeted approach in your online marketing (and SEO specifically). Just think about consumer behavior in general, when you go out shopping you only buy something if it caters to your tastes, needs, wants, and/or desires. Thus if you are looking for a hypnotherapist in Los Angeles you are much more likely to become a client of someone whose site is showing up #1 for “Los Angeles hypnotherapist” then for “hypnotherapist.”

I hope you find this information useful when trying to determine how to create and implement an online marketing strategy.

Have anything else to add?

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I’m a member of 24 hour fitness in San Francisco; I went to the usual 24 hr locaton that I usually go to, only to find a sign on the door that says they were closed due to a power outage…”damn I really wanted a workout” I thought.  In front of the closed 24 hour fitness were two young ladies that were telling me I could go get a free workout out their gym 1 block down the road.  Of course, I accepted their invitation (a little card they gave me) and went over to their gym called “Crunch.”

I thought this was a very interesting way for “Crunch” to capitalize on the 24hr fitness shutdown.  When I went over to Crunch they had me fill out a little card with some of my basic information; they must have had over 100 24hr fitness customers come in throughout the day.  Now Crunch has all of their information and can try to sell them on their gym.  Of course, I only saw the outage at 24hr fitness today, if it has been going (or will go) on for a few days then Crunch can potentially get hundreds of people to migrate gyms.

This made me think about how large companies could exploit competitor faults.  What if during the Amazon crisis not to long ago (where they were down for a few hours) Ebay issued some sort of radical promotion to all sellers and let them list for free without charging them for photos, bold text, etc?  What if during the few hours that gmail was down a few days ago, Yahoo ran some promotion giving all users a credit on their add network if they signed up for a Yahoo account?  What if the next time twitter is down, Plurk makes a massive PR attempt to migrate people over to their platform?

Now nobody said any of the above things would be easy to do, but the return should be huge.  The best time to get someone to change to another product or service is when their existing one isn’t working.  There are a lot of opportunities to dip into the competitor customer pool but I don’t see much of this going on.  Sure there are price wars, marketing and sales pitches, etc.  But nobody is really taking advantage of timing, and I think that is a huge opportunity that companies are missing out on.  What Crunch did to 24 hour fitness was a great example of how opportune timing can boost your customer base.  Now, with the internet and social media, spreading the word about a new promotion is not that hard.  I think what Crunch did to 24 hr was great and clever strategy.

Have you seen companies use timing (vs competitors) to increase their customer base?  Who?

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(photo was taken from a small yogurt shop in Santa Cruz)

When I say critics I mean customers, users, clients, bloggers, etc. I mean anyone that uses your product or your service; how are you getting feedback from them? If you offer a product or service to people but then are not getting good or bad feedback, it is difficult to evaluate success, satisfaction, and company direction. Your users would love to talk to you and tell you what they love and hate about your product, let them! That way you know what you need to improve upon or what you should leave alone. There are many ways to get feedback from your users:

• Comments from blogs
• E-mails directly to management
• Surveys
• Phone calls with clients (or users/etc.)
• Meetings with clients (or users/etc.)
• Twitter replies or direct messages

The list can go on and on, virtually any social media platform can become a method of getting feedback from your “critics.” Feedback is probably one of the most valuable things for a company and should be encouraged, especially from the loyal users and enthusiasts. Look at the Apple fans. Year after year they demand and ask for things from Apple and most of the time they get it, because they are very vocal about what they want and Apple encourages and listens to user feedback. This is probably one of the greatest reasons that has contributed to Apple’s success. If Apple didn’t encourage and get feedback, how would they what features to build into their products? How would they know what they need to improve on? How would they know what the users expect? The answer is they wouldn’t. Don’t underestimate the importance of feedback and make sure to ask and encourage it whenever and wherever possible. Make it EASY for people to give feedback, if you ask for feedback and make users go through a 5 step process, then you might as well not bother.

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Those of you familiar with advertising may be familiar with the rule of 3. This rule states that in order for a consumer to actively think about purchasing your product or service you have to hit them with the advertisement 3 different times. For example if a company wants to sell you something they should send you an email, a direct mail letter and give you a phone call. This is just an example, but you get the point. This “rule” has been around quite some time and I think we need to re-examine its effectiveness.

The rule of 3 has been in existence pre-internet but I question its modern day utility. Let’s think about this for a moment. The overall attention span of humans is decreasing, meaning we are all getting a more and more ADD with how we perceive and interact with information. We don’t have the time to sit and watch ads anymore, we want things instantly and we want it our way, and we don’t get it, we hit the “back” or the “delete” button. So knowing this, do you think that marketers should spend their time trying to show you MORE ads? There has been a large backlash against telemarketers, spammers, blog pitchers, etc. for precisely this reason, people do not want to be spammed and people do not want to see more ads.

There are a couple of things that can happen. Either the rule of 3 will turn into the rule of 33, meaning that marketers are really going to have to bombard and spam the hell out of people in order to get their attention (and really irritate them). OR instead, the rule of 3 will switch from a metric of quantity to a metric of quality and relevancy. Instead of concentrating on how many times marketers need to advertise to someone to get their attention, marketers need to focus on the relevancy and the quality of those ads.

We can all see that our attention is diminishing we don’t want to be bombarded with ads and we don’t want to be spammed, so what is the solution? Focus on relevancy, it is far more effective to show someone 1 relevant ad than it is to show non-relevant ads in larger quantity. Of course we could combine the concepts and show more relevant ads, but remember over time marketers will reach a point of diminishing return, meaning that just because you show more relevant ads doesn’t mean you are going to get more purchases. There is a balance between relevancy and respecting your consumers. Show consumers relevant ads, but don’t bombard them. If you are tired of seeing ads, so are your consumers.

What do you think about the rule of 3? Do you find it effective or not?

Thanks for reading.

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