July 27th, 2010
The lazy days of summer are fast coming to an end. Vacations are just about over, the kids will be returning to school…in short, it is almost time for the autumn selling season. The question is: will your business be poised to capture a burst of year end revenue growth?
If not, August is time for you to roll into action. If you have been considering a website revitalization, now is the time to act. Did you know that the average person gives you only about eight seconds to capture their interest once they’ve landed on your website? And, over 40% of people say they will not do business with a company that does not have an internet presence? Even more interesting, a study by the preeminent Forrester Research indicates that a website redesign can yield a Return-On-Investment of anywhere from 70-500 percent!
Once you have a web destination that will effectively convert visitors into (offline or online) buyers, the crucial next step is to not believe that if you ‘build it and they will come.’ Virtually all companies see minuscule revenues when they follow that reasoning. Instead, your job is to make sure people find you among the millions of websites out there.
Listen to this startling statistic from the consultancy Accenture: 87 percent of adults that purchase offline have been somehow influenced in that purchase online. Being found online is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity. And the fastest route to success is to use the services of a powerhouse digital advertising agency, such as our partner LocalDirective, to set you up with a highly effective Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) in the major national and (potentially local or vertical) search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing can get you results immediately. The ultimately controllable directional advertising, it is perfect for companies whose products and services are only purchased when needed. For instance, a plumber could not persuade someone to buy his services if they are not needed.
Google says that up to thousands can be earned for each dollar spent in search engine marketing. Many advertisers report a high ROI as compared to most (if not all) other forms of advertising.
Be sure to check out our website for information about our search engine marketing programs and learn more about how to get ready for a burst of revenue growth.
Tags: SEM, SEO, website revitilization, year end sales
Posted in Lisa M | No Comments »
June 14th, 2010
This is the second part of our series, which attempts to help clear up the world of search engine marketing. There are many words, terms and acronyms used in the SEM industry. We want to make sure you understand you marketing program and make the best decisions possible about how and where your money is best spent.
- Bid – The upper limit an advertiser is willing to pay the search engines for a click.
- Bounce Rate – When a visitor visits a single page of a website without continuing on to another page of the website. For single page landing pages this is usually higher than on multi page websites.
- Brand – A name or a symbol that is associated with a company or product.
- Branding – When an advertiser attempts to create an association between a phrase or symbol and a company or product.
- Clicks – The number of times a person clicks on a link to your website. In paid search this is the number of times your ad has been clicked on.
- CPC – Acronym for Cost Per Click, which means the average amount an advertiser, is paying for each.
- CTR – Stand for Click Through Rate. This is the percentage of the time that an ad is clicked on when it is view. Calculated by dividing the clicks by the impressions.
- Campaign – There are two meanings for this word. The first is an advertising project from start to finish. When speaking about an SEM account a campaign means the largest logical grouping available.
- Cookie – A file that is downloaded automatically to a computer when a user accesses a website. These files are used for a number of purposes including analytical tracking and conversion reporting.
- Content Network – A network of websites that display contextual advertising from a third party site. Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft all have versions of a content network, which advertisers can opt into.
- Contextual Advertising – Strategically advertising on a web page based on the web pages keywords and demographics.
- Conversion – A meaningful and measurable online event that usually means a visitor has moved from viewing a website to taking an active interest in a product or service. Usually a converted visitor is a lead or sale.
- Conversion Rate – The percentage of paid visitors who convert to a sale or lead. Calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of visitors.
- Crawler – A program search engines, and other companies, use to crawl the web automatically to find an index and store web pages. Also known as a spider or bot.
- Daypart – Splitting advertising to appear during specific times throughout the day.
Tags: search engine marketing terms, SEM Dictionary
Posted in Josh G | No Comments »
June 4th, 2010
Awhile ago, I wrote about the foundational elements of building a strong online presence. One of the three major components is a powerful website. I define a powerful website as one that actually accomplishes its purpose quite well. Operatively, then, a website must have a purpose. Putting on my MBA hat for just a moment, I would like for all websites to have a ‘measurable’ purpose. The world of qualitative assessments is fine if you are choosing a piece of art, but in the world of websites that either work or do not work, quantitative is key. So, please, let’s define a quantitative purpose. Of course, the one that immediately comes to mind is either direct revenue impact OR a leading indicator of revenue impact. Online sales. Phone calls. Form completions. Coupon downloads. You get it.
With that as my “obvious” starting point, I look out into the world of existing websites. Long past my shock, I find this online world very curious, and populated with some real interesting characters. Not to besmirch any of my online colleagues, but most frequently I find these questionable participants in either web development or in SEO. And really, all snootiness aside, I see how this situation occurred. A decade ago, marketers and business strategists were just beginning to grasp the impact of this channel, this media. The main players in this world – at that time – were programmers and developers, and lots of other folks that did not bring a business perspective, nor did they know how to even determine the business questions to ask during the development process.
What they did, and exceptionally well, was to deliver some level of whiz-bangness to web development. I would never diminish the extraordinary ideas they (collectively) develop and implement, much to our awe and amazement.
The problem with this approach, though, is that it often left (and leaves) the real target of a website long behind. That is, the customer. The one who – through purchases – actually funds the website. And this is the fatal error of most websites, even today. If you don’t start with the customer, who they are, how they buy, what they need to make decisions…well, you are going to just end up with another ineffective website.
So now we’ve talked about a fundamental cause of ineffective websites. Next time, I will tackle what it means to keep your customers in mind during website development.
Tags: powerful websites, website effectiveness, website for customers, website target audience
Posted in Lisa M | No Comments »
May 21st, 2010
Hello world,
It has been a blessedly busy couple of weeks here at LD. As a result of our awesome sales people, we are staying quite busy with exciting new websites, SEM programs, and other projects. Check out some of our recently completed sites and let us know if you think we improved on the originals. These are all redesigns of existing sites so you can compare the old and the new. (In my personal, unbiased opinion, I think they are great!)
Case Study – Fireworks Retailer
Case – Business Telephone Provider
Case – OTC Aspirin Product
Case – Tanning Salon
More website design and revitalization case studies coming soon!
Tags: localdirective website development, website redesign, website revitilization
Posted in Danielle N | No Comments »
April 30th, 2010
In the world of search engine marketing there are many commonly used industry terms that are confusing to many outsiders. Whether you are beginning a new paid search program, or have had one for years, you should arm yourself with some basic information. This knowledge will help you make informed decisions as well as make the conversation you have with your PPC manager much more productive. To help demystify your program we have compiled the Search Engine Marketing Dictionary and Primer.
- 301 Redirect – A tool that allows webmasters to tell search engine crawlers that a page has moved to a new location permanently. It is also useful in canonicalization.
- 404 Error – An automatic response that is built into a server that tells users that a page cannot be found. This usually occurs when a user arrives at a non-existent page by clicking on a bad link or typing a URL incorrectly.
- A/B Testing – Also known as split testing, A/B testing randomly displays two different version of the same page. Usually the pages have one minor change allowing advertisers to compare different page elements for effectiveness.
- Above The Fold – Originally this term referred to the portion of a newspaper that appears above the middle line of the front page where the newspaper would have been folded. It was the first thing a reader would see. In search engine marketing this is the portion of a webpage that the user can see without needing to scroll down the page.
- Ad Groups – Contained in a campaign an ad group creates a logical grouping of similar keywords or keyword phrases and the associated ads. Campaigns can contain multiple ad groups.
- adCenter – Microsoft’s paid search platform.
- AdWords – Google’s paid search platform.
- Analytics– Also known as analytical tracking, this is a way to measure a websites performance and users behavior.
- Text Ad – The most common type of paid search advertising used by the search engines. These ads consist of a title, copy, and display URL.
- Text Ad Copy – The main content of a text ad consisting of two lines of text that contain no more than 35 characters each.
- Text Ad Title – The opening line of a text ad, which is usually displayed in a larger font size and different color than the rest of the ad. The title cannot contain more than 25 characters.
- Text Ad URL – A URL, which is displayed at the bottom of a text ad. This URL is usually a different color than the rest of the ad and cannot contain more than 35 characters of text.
- B2B – An acronym for business to business. Refers to a company that’s primary customer is other businesses.
- B2C – An acronym for business to consumer. A business whose primary customer is consumers.
Posted in Josh G | 5 Comments »
April 23rd, 2010
Simply building a website will not assure you success online. Your site must be accessible to your ideal market. Online, this includes both people and machines. It’s the search algorithms that manage traffic, and the individuals that respond to your offerings. The unfortunate truth is that many companies which design their own website tend to create sites that are inaccessible to their online community, either by neglecting search tactics, or by writing without consideration for their true target audience. Without copywriting that integrates internet marketing strategies and targeted language and tone, your site will not generate quality leads for your business.
Accessibility
In order for your website to bring you quality leads, build customer loyalty, and help your business succeed, you must first be found. Being found by the right clients involves pleasing both them, and the search engines. This means designing the site right from the start thinking of the ways people will look for your business online. Nearly 90% of people begin looking for new products online. This means the search engines must identify sites which are likely to contain the content they searched for out of more than 150 million sites. The beauty of the internet is that you can generate high quality leads because people are choosing to look at your site. From the hundreds of results provided to your users, how will they choose you?
Community
Think of the internet as one huge community. Like any community, there are overlapping governing bodies managing interactions and traffic, there are neighborhoods or cliques, and there are individuals living their individual lives. Online, search engines, social media sites and the like, gather and direct network traffic to get people where they need to go. Neighborhoods are groups of users that know each other, either in the real world, like business associates, or through online connections. Many of these are self-formed groups, or peer-to-peer, and are indeed one of the greatest powers of the democratizing internet. Individual users are constantly looking through, linking to and from, and editing content online. All these groups filter the content on the internet to form constantly changing but interconnected web communities. The more times the groups connect to you and you to them, the closer you are drawn to the center of the community that contains your perfect customers.
Writing For Accessibility & Community
True optimization of a website is a journey, not a destination. The internet is constantly changing because it is almost entirely user generated. Search algorithms are based on complicated predictions of user thoughts and intensions (think about how many time Google has corrected your spelling!) There are nearly 85,000 new websites are added everyday with the links formed in the billions. What this means is that your website is not permanent, and it is not finished… ever. When planning your website, you must consider a great many factors including current search trends and possible future trends, the expandability of the structure and design, the knowledge level of your audience, key words and phrases, proving your authority, and much more. Content writing must follow the structure and goals of your website. In order to be accessible, you must include words, phrases, links, data and content that allow search engines to identify you and what you’re all about. On top of this, you must always be engaging and convincing your community that you’re the real deal. Whew! It’s a lot to remember.
Posted in Danielle N | 9 Comments »
April 16th, 2010
Are you trying to figure out how to get more customers for your business? You keep spending money and trying different things but nothing seems to work. The answer…keep persistently trying to contact people online, offline, above the line, below the line…did you know that you have to reach 3-4 times more people and leave an impression 7-9 times before you establish a relationship and close! Now that is a lot of people and a lot of impressions. You might ask yourself, how am I ever going to do that? You need to reach out to thousands of people just to get to your top 100 prospects that you communicate with in conversation. The answer is the INTERNET!! Businesses will not thrive, let alone survive without using the internet for marketing. It is the most essential channel of media distribution today, mission critical. Talk about affordable, there is so much you can do for low or no cost…email for starters.
Every business must have a website, or at least a landing page to act as the destination to capture lead information. Now that we have that established, the next step is getting traffic to your website. Fact or fiction…”build it and they will come”…complete fiction. I have spoken to hundreds of business owners that thought all they needed was a website to get leads. They were disappointed after they had spent thousands of dollars developing a website only to find out it was not optimized for search, or had no way to capture leads or didn’t service their business! It will cost money, but the website can be fixed and now they need to also spend more time and money to drive traffic to their site. Driving traffic is the key and then capturing the leads in a database is the future goldmine!
So how do you drive traffic to your website? Market, market, market! I was recently one of the Team Leaders for Loral Langemeier’s Cash Machine Workshop in Chicago. For 3 days we talked about the importance of always be marketing…she says “entrepreneurs don’t have business lives and personal lives, you only have one life” and you need to constantly connect and ask how you can help people satisfy their needs! There are hundreds of ways to market, so write down a plan and make sure your campaign supports your goals. First step, be sure your website URL is everywhere…on your business cards, letterhead, email signature, brochures and all media both off line and online. Just to start, create your campaign and send it on email, advertise online pay for click, print flyers to hand out at networking events, update profiles on the social networks, post to blogs, and on and on! Don’t forget the reason you are marketing…collect all those leads, put them in your database then keep marketing to them, sell them something and market some more! Happy Day
Posted in Vicki D | 5 Comments »
April 8th, 2010
Welcome to LocalDirective’s Grow Your Online Presence Blog, which will be focused on helping you to grow a powerful online presence for your business. Each month, LocalDirective team members or our guest bloggers will post articles that (hopefully) will provide a shred of insight on topics of interest and/or point you to authoritative sites for more information. Our topics will span from converting customers that come to you from online marketing, to methods for developing powerful visual impact, to social media methods and community building. And everything in between.
The core of our focus, however, will always be on how to grow a powerful online presence. At a foundational level, there are three factors of utmost importance:
1) A comprehensive website that supports the buying process for purchasers of all of your offerings. Notice that we did not say ‘the selling process.’ While they are obviously parallel processes – one from your client’s point of view (the buying process) and one from your point of view (the selling process), the most powerful websites are built around a focus on the customer. This means that the strongest websites will come from documenting all the steps of the buying process of your service or product (from you OR from one of your competitors), and then a methodical approach to making sure that each step is informationally supported. As an example, the steps a prospective customer might take include becoming aware of your offerings, conducting feature comparisons, checking references, making a purchase. This process will be different for each type of business, and it might be slightly different for each of your target segments. The point is, though, your website must support each of the buying process steps, whatever they are.
2) Search Engine Marketing (SEM) in the major national and (potentially local or vertical) search engines that enables you to choose to whom your advertising will show, that presents a message you want to share, and that delivers visitors to the destination of your choosing. SEM marketing is immediate, and you can expect results to begin within days from starting your program. Search engine marketing is sometimes called Pay-Per-Click, Sponsored Search or Paid Search. Google says that up to thousands can be earned for each dollar spent in search. They have access to lots more information than do we, but we know it is true that our clients report a high ROI as compared to most (if not all) other forms of advertising. What we like most about SEM is that it is very controllable – everything from where and when your ads show, to how much is spent each and every day. And since we are a Google-certified company with experience that spans over a decade, your results tend to out-perform the market average, making you very, very happy.
3) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that builds a strong organic presence for a handful of your most important and highly trafficked keywords. Since the search engines determine your placement for keyword searches, we attend to both ‘On-Page’ factors (how your website is designed and the content) and ‘Off-Page’ factors that increase your ‘popularity’ for the best placement on search results pages. SEO is a longer process than SEM, and Google suggests expecting a year for full optimization. Note that many Social Media Marketing (SMM) opportunities serve as SEO techniques, including use of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, as well as on-site and off-site blog posting. The LocalDirective approach is to begin developing the SEO strategy about four months after we start your SEM program, so we can learn about what keywords work, how visitors behave once on your site, where your visitors come from, and more. All of this information helps us to develop very strong programs that deliver the results you need from your SEO program.
Over time, we will elaborate and extend on these areas of focus to achieve our goal of helping you build the strongest online presence possible for your business. We look forward to the shared journey.
Posted in Lisa M | 4 Comments »
Local Directive
|
|
|
