Posted by: Nikki Johnson, Marketing Coordinator

Mobile advertising is here to stay.
Sixty four million U.S. wireless subscribers accessed the Internet using a mobile device in May 2009, which is two times the amount in the previous year. The Kelsey Group conducted a study that predicts the mobile ad market to reach $3.1 billion in spending by 2013. According to another study by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), CTR’s coming from mobile campaigns are falling in between 5% and 15%, significantly beating the 2% average of desktop campaigns.

Looking to try your hand at mobile marketing, considering all of these compelling stats?
Try a mobile paid search campaign. PPC ads, via mobile or through a traditional paid desktop campaign, follow similar business models, giving advertisers the ability to leverage their existing knowledge. However, it is very important that advertisers develop their mobile campaigns with SEO at the top of their minds. Because of the limitations that some mobile devices face when viewing the mobile Web, people are less likely to scroll down and view results beyond the first page, or maybe even the first three results. It is hard enough to see all the information on that tiny little screen. The good news for mobile is that some SEO experts predict future mobile sites to have an advantage in rankings compared to a desktop site vying for the same keywords. This points to the necessity for mobile advertisers to pay special attention to their campaigns.  It is important to maintain top paid positioning within your campaigns as well as achieve top paid placement for terms where you may struggle to reach top organic positioning. Optimization of paid search bids and positioning will become critical, so be sure to monitor any new mobile campaign on a daily basis!

Posted by: John Batchelder, Conversion-Driven Media Specialist

Negotiating value added (VA) media with publishers involves persistent negotiation, but does not mean your publisher should be taking a loss on your campaign or that the client should be getting valueless value added placements. The VA media negotiation starts with a positive agency/publisher relationship as well as a solid media plan, and ends with a combined effort by you and your publisher to boost the value of an already strong proposal.

Just like any relationship, you’ll get from a publisher relationship what you put in. Being pushy or dismissive may get you the value added media you want initially, but will not get your campaigns trafficked in time, your phone calls returned, or help you get out of a pinch when you need your publisher’s help. Start by being honest about the client’s expectations, then work with your publisher to build the best proposal possible with paid media. After you have received a proposal from your publisher, ask if the paid placements provided are absolutely the best opportunities for client’s objective. Asking this question may prevent your value added media from consistently out-performing your paid placements.
read more »

Posted by: Kayla Wagner, Account Manager

A recent JupiterResearch/ClickZ survey of email marketers showed that 81% believed that their most effective tool for acquiring emails, both in quantity and quality, was their own website. Given this statistic, looking at how you drive people to your website in order to build those lists is pretty important. Whatever the channel, a prospect that sees your ad should have a clear call to action to receive more communications from you.

Further, be sure that once a prospect clicks from your ad, that there is an easy and clear path to sign up for your brand’s communications that is simple enough to make them want to fill out a basic form and submit their email.  Then, once you have that information, be sure to speak to your audience differently based on who they are. You can send a welcome email as soon as a person opts-in to start the conversation, and follow that with triggered messaging based on a prospect’s actions on your website.

Alternatively, if the user is a customer or client, you would want to send them a different message than that of your new prospect. The use of automated marketing tools can help you make this an easy process overtime.

If you spend the upfront time and strategic thought aligning your advertising – be it search, social, media or offline – with your approach to building your prospect list versus that of your current customer relationship program, you’re sure to see positive results. This isn’t an overnight trick, it will take time and investment, but it will certainly pay-off in the end.

Posted by: Caitlin Diehl, Senior Marketing Coordinator

We’re all familiar with Google’s Local Search, but after we’ve set ourselves up for success there, where should we go? The answer is easy, get involved with Bing.

With Bing’s increasing popularity as a search engine, it is going to be vital that you get your company set up in Bing Local. Not only is it easy, but Bing comes with new features that other local engines don’t offer.

First, get a local business listing. It is as easy as entering your basic business information (address, name, phone number). No edits or additions can be made without a Windows Live ID, so get one set up today!

Once you get through the first steps, the process is easy. Users are encouraged to make use of the links that can be added to listings. This is a great spot for reviews or menu links. After you are done customizing your listing, you’ll be required to verify ownership via mail or phone. Your listing will be live within 2-7 business days of verification.

So now you are all set up in Bing, but what makes it different than any other local engine?

Bing has some distinct features that offer a better user experience and more potential traffic to your business. The first is a Scorecard, which compiles all user reviews and sets up easy-to-read rankings within categories like atmosphere and return potential. Bing also features a ‘Show info from’ link where users can see data pulled from other trusted sources like Frommer’s travel guide. Finally, searchers can get a ‘bird’s eye view’ of local listings. They have the ability to see its general location, parking options, the neighborhood type and what is nearby. Directions are also offered from major intersections as opposed to only specific addresses.

While these features set Bing apart from competitors, don’t forget to get your business posted in as many local engines as possible. Just be sure to put Bing at the top of the list!

Posted by: Jessica Shepherd, Project Manager & Gloria Dutton, Senior Marketing Coordinator

You’ve done some SEO work, by hiring an SEO agency or dedicating some in-house time and expertise. What’s next? Is your team giving you regular actionable reports prioritizing the tactics they are engaged in? Are you seeing how the program is performing and what your next high-priority steps are? If not, are you considering an SEO audit?

Some search professionals describe an audit as a “99 point assessment” of every possible SEO tactic, from meta data to links to social presence. That’s nice, but it doesn’t tell you much when your budget only allows for 20 tactics – and you may just need to do five of them right to dramatically improve your program.

The key is to start not with a laundry list but with evaluation and prioritization. As long as you are focusing on the right keywords – an assumption that an audit can help validate – you can use a broad set of analytical tools and a solid methodology to efficiently identify where your program is strong, where it is weak, and where the low hanging fruit is. Consider taking these steps:

1. Focus on major tactical areas like on-site factors, linking, social media and local visibility.
2. Identify the areas that are most likely to get you listed and convert your target audience.
3. Measure how well you are executing on the high priority tactics.
4. Scope out the level of effort required to fill the gaps in each of these areas. Play to your organization’s strengths – e.g., if you have a great story and a PR engine to tell it, use that asset in your SEO program.

With this approach, you can direct your team or vendor to focus their time where the impact will be greatest. If you are also engaged in paid search, combine your SEO and SEM analyses. Contact us to get started – email info@90octane.com and ask about our SEO/SEM audit.

Posted by: Shannon Anderson, Project Manager

Social media marketing is becoming ever more important in building integrated online marketing campaigns for both BtoB and BtoC companies. Not only are social efforts paying off in terms of site traffic, conversions and sales leads are often generated as a result as well.
While launching a social campaign is highly important, it is equally important to track metrics specific to the campaign’s goals and measure ROI for these efforts. Listed below are common social campaign goals along with some of the measurable metrics for each. Evaluating these metrics can help you determine the overall ROI of the social media campaign.

• Site Traffic - Measure increases in traffic to your website looking at the source of the click.
• Buzz – Track the number of comments, video views, or other user generated responses to determine the amount of buzz surrounding your campaign.
• Leads - Track any newsletter sign-ups, requests for contact, product purchases or other actions that qualify a user as a lead.
• Reputation – Track the number of users leaving positive remarks about your brand and the number of negative remarks you were able to combat through these social platforms.

While you may or may not be able to track a click all the way through a sale, certain assumptions can be made regarding the value of each action. Tracking the success of social media efforts will help you hone in on what type of communication carries weight with your audience and focus your budget and efforts in these places.

Posted by: Kerry Houchin, Marketing Coordinator

Google recently announced that it is making a major change to its organic search results algorithm. The update, expected to give Google the ability to cache pages more quickly and comprehensively, has been dubbed “Google Caffeine.” Caffeine will affect organic search in several ways, but here are three ways you might not have thought of that it will affect paid search:

1. Paid search may become more necessary to supplement your organic listings.  Changes in the organic listings including rank changes and index-size changes may mean that you’re not getting the organic visibility you’re used to seeing. Now would be a good time to begin watching organic results carefully and making up for any decline in traffic using paid search.
2. Paid search campaigns will need to become more nimble. With the changes in indexing speed brought about by Caffeine, being able to adjust paid search campaigns on the fly will become more and more important.
3. Geo-targeting will become more important.  With Caffeine, there seems to be less of an emphasis on news results and a greater emphasis on local results. Geo-targeting will ensure that your ads show up in precisely the right locations, rather than leaving it up to Google to guess if your ad is relevant to local searches.

Search algorithms will always change. Understanding the right mix between PPC and SEO is essential for maintaining search visibility.