Posted by: Janessa Seewald, Account Manager

Despite the tough economy and the fact that many companies are cutting portions of their budgets, most are maintaining their presence online and adopting an even more competitive, aggressive approach. The following tips can be utilized to help differentiate your pay-per-click (PPC) advertising/contextual advertising strategy from your competitors’.

1. Evaluate the messaging your competition is using within their PPC and contextual ads, and determine how to make your creative stronger. It’s got to really stand out. For example, use questions, customer testimonials and of course your strongest offer within your ad text.

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Posted by: Kerry Houchin, Marketing Coordinator

What is it, and how does it work?
SearchWiki is a new tool that Google has unveiled allowing users who are logged into Google accounts to customize their search results.

Now, in addition to searching, you have the ability to:

• Move your favorite search results to the top of the listings
• Add a URL to appear along with Google’s results for certain searches
• Remove search results you don’t consider useful
• Make public comments about search results

One thing to note, however, is that the public comments are the only customizations that will appear to other users. If you move your website to the top of the results, you are the only one who will see that. read more »

Posted by: Shannon Denny, Project Manager

It seems more than ever marketers are striving to make the most of their marketing bucks. If you’ve previously run search engine marketing (SEM) programs, one of the best ways to stretch your dollar is to evaluate your campaigns’ past performance. Here are a few questions to ask when optimizing your current SEM campaign:

·     What type of traffic did your previous campaign drive? If you were satisfied with the number and quality of the leads you were receiving, then it’s safe to assume you can continue down the same path; however, if the leads didn’t necessarily give you the results you were looking for, consider the strategy of your past campaign. For a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign, you may need to revisit the keyword strategy to determine what terms converted well. For an organic optimization (or SEO) program, see what position your website was showing up in, and try being more aggressive with any terms that aren’t performing to your expectations. read more »

Posted by: Jessica Shepherd, Project Manager

Can search engine marketing (or SEM) continue to sustain itself in the current economic slump? Here’s what some industry experts have to say…

A recent issue alert from BtoB Magazine reveals how search engine marketing remains strong despite the economic downturn. A new Covario study shows 32% growth for Q3 year over year for paid search in North America, while Forrester Research projects that paid search will grow 26% this year alone. Evan Andrews, an interactive marketing analyst with Forrester, said, “Because of its inherent accountability, search offers a safe haven for marketers and advertisers who are pushed by the recession to meet some pretty aggressive goals. You can track every cent and every click.”

Considering the current state of the economy and how some marketing budgets are being cut, it’s more important than ever for marketing tactics to be measurable. Take a glance at how digital tactics are affected during a recession in this MarketingSherpa chart:

My take? It’s no coincidence that advertisers are utilizing lower cost, measurable digital marketing tactics to maintain visibility and customer relationships. It’s critical to engage with smart marketing tactics that provide the best ROI for your business. That’s the bottom line.

Posted by: Leslie Russell, Senior Marketing Coordinator

Where has the time gone? It has been over a year since you last updated the metadata so important to your website’s search engine optimization (SEO), you can’t remember when the content on your site was last updated and some of your pay-per-click (PPC) advertising keywords seem a little stale. Now is the time to see which keywords have been performing, revamp your keyword list and get a refreshed search engine marketing strategy rolled out.

Start off by doing a little investigation on the success of your last keyword strategy.

Phase 1: Research

·      Review your site in-depth. Have you updated content or removed content? Are you keeping pace with trends in your industry?

·      Glance at your key competitors’ websites. Are they using different language and keywords throughout their content or metadata? Reviewing their sites may spark additional ideas for your keyword strategy. 

·      Pull analytics reports looking at non-paid and paid keywords.  Consider if all of these terms are still relevant, or if there are new terms you haven’t considered before.

·      Use keyword tools to gather recommendations of adjectives, synonyms, plurals, etc.

·      Take a look your organic and paid visibility. Are you getting exposure for the keywords you consider most important? If not consider how to make those words a higher priority in your refreshed keyword strategy. read more »

Posted by: Kelly Hall, Account Manager

Companies continue to utilize search engine marketing (SEM) to promote their products and services. Why? The simple fact is that prospects, as a result of the current economic conditions, are evaluating their purchasing decisions more closely than ever before.

In fact, prospects are now tasked with making smarter purchasing decisions. Faced with shrinking budgets, or simply calls to be more careful spenders, they are taking more steps to ensure that their purchases will 100% satisfy their business needs.  read more »

Posted by: Caitlin Diehl, Marketing Coordinator

With businesses investing more and more in interactive marketing efforts, it seems like there are hundreds of new e-newsletters popping up every day. How do you know which ones to subscribe to? Which ones are helpful, and which ones will only take up space in your inbox? Below is a list of some of my favorite e-newsletters available today and details on how they manage to stay on top with new competitors emerging all of the time.

·         MediaPost’s SearchINSIDER

o   INSIDER guarantees good content in a short, easy-to-read format. The blog is available through free subscription. It is sent to your inbox every day and provides valuable information about the search engine industry. Topics range from tips on word-of-mouth branding to social media marketing and even Google engine updates.

http://www.mediapost.com/blogs/search_insider/

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Posted by: Rosemary Riley, Senior Copywriter

Over the past month, we’ve been covering topics related to email - from benchmarks to best practices. Now MarketingSherpa has issued a new Guide with research in which marketers reveal top strategies for email during an economic downturn.

They offer a timely, special fourteen-page PDF as a free excerpt from the Guide. It includes:

• Stats showing email’s resurgence as a marketing tactic during the economic downturn
• Marketers’ attitudes toward email budgets and correlation with performance
• An eyetracking heatmap on how to overcome image-blocking
• And an outline of opportunities for international email marketing read more »

Posted by: Gloria Dutton, Marketing Coordinator

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can attract some of the best leads – people who are already searching for your business or the products and services you offer. They’re actually searching for you, not the other way around. And while appearing for the right terms may be the first step, it’s not the most critical. Just showing up is not enough when you want prospects to take notice, click your ad (and not your competitors’) and dig into why the product you offer is superior. The key to this is writing attractive ad copy. The tricky part is that writing ad copy does not have a standardized formula. It varies from industry to industry, person to person, and especially from B2C to B2B. It is important to understand the key differences between the B2B audience and the B2C audience and how to change your copy accordingly. read more »

Posted by: Janessa Seewald, Account Manager

You’ve just gone through all the necessary steps for creating a PPC campaign – selected keywords, developed text ads, etc. You’re ready to pull the trigger and make it all go live, right? Well, there’s one thing that you might have overlooked, and that’s tying your PPC budget to seasonality.

By seasonality, I don’t just mean seasons and holidays. Think about the times of year that your customers are searching for your services or products and when most sales are completed. read more »