Posted by: Janessa Seewald, Account Manager
Setting goals for a new search engine marketing (SEM) program and developing the strategy that will achieve them are your first steps toward high ROI. There are several important factors that arise when you go through this process, ranging from qualitative considerations such as the audience’s awareness of your brand to quantitative considerations including your initial budget.
Let’s take a look at a few of these factors more closely:
- Brand Awareness – Knowing how familiar your target audience is with your brand plays a large role in goal setting and strategy development. This will help you define what tactics to consider as part of your program and what metrics you define as important in achieving your goals. For example, contextual advertising is a great way to generate brand awareness by targeting prospects that are searching for content related to your product/service offerings. However, since this is often primarily a branding tactic, you should expect a much lower click-through rate (CTR) than you might from tactics such as email or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. read more »
Posted by: Shannon Anderson, Project Manager
Last month, Google launched a search filtering tool called Search Options which allows users to filter their search results to show only videos, forums or reviews over a specified time frame. By selecting the “Show Options” feature in the blue bar under the search field, users can access these filtering options to bring up more relevant and useful listings.
Google’s Search Options also allows users to select “Wonder Wheel” to display other relevant searches that might be of interest. The example below shows related searches to the term “summer olympics.”
read more »
Posted by: Nikki Johnson, Marketing Coordinator
As it turns out, we learned more from the recent swine flu scare than we thought. And not just that we needed to limit travel to Mexico or wash our hands more frequently. An article on WebProNews used the flu as an example of why we should be paying attention to the types of searches people are conducting on the Web.
According to the article, the website stats of a blog posting discussing the swine flu prove that people are now using more long-tailed search queries to find the information they need. In fact, the author claims that the days of focusing search engine optimization (SEO) efforts exclusively on short keyword phrases are gone. Search marketers should now target longer keyword phrases in order to try and capture exactly what someone is searching for. The top search phrase used by visitors to the particular swine flu posting was, “How do you know if you have swine flu?” Nine-word phrases like these are coined “money keywords” and are expected to bring in a targeted audience to your website.
read more »
Posted by: Megan Amick, Marketing Coordinator
Microsoft has recently launched its new search engine called Bing. Bing was designed to be easy to use and efficiently return simple results. In addition, it’s also being promoted as a decision-making tool. For example, if you’re unsure about where you’d like to eat out, Bing can help you find the right restaurant.
This new product launch from Microsoft joins various other search engine products that have been released recently, including the Wolfram|Alpha search engine. But Bing is also another attempt, once again, by Microsoft to steal market share back from Google. (Google’s share of searches keeps growing and is now over 70%.) Bing is promising that this time the product is different.
read more »
Posted by: Kerry Houchin, Marketing Coordinator
Your pizza search just got easier. Thanks to new local search results from Google, you no longer have to type in the name of your city when looking for a local pizza joint or other local business results. Google now shows local results for generic keywords based on IP address even when the location is not specified in the query.
What does this mean for small local shops? The potential for generating business from generic keywords (and SEO) has gone through the roof! First-page results are attainable for even your most basic keywords if the search originated in your region. The local search results are displayed in the center of the search results page instead of at the top of the page when there is no location specified, but a first page listing is still far more valuable than no top 30 result at all.
read more »
Posted by: Rosemary Riley, Senior Copywriter
Forbes has just released the results of its “Ad Effectiveness Survey,” conducted among senior marketing executives during February and March 2009. The survey delved into behaviors and beliefs around digital marketing and forecasts areas of growth and weakness over the next six months.
Highlights include:
- When it comes to influencing brand perception, the most effective tactics were site sponsorships and pay-per-impression programs on digital publications.
- For garnering conversions, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and email were seen as the three most effective tools.
- 82% of marketers are using conversions or sales data.
- 55% use registrations.
- Over the next six months, respondents plan to allocate a higher percentage of digital media dollars to viral marketing (42%) and SEO (40%), while 53% stated they would spend less on Ad Networks.
View the complete survey results.
Posted by: Christy Roth, Project Manager
When setting lead generation goals for a new program, there are many important considerations to keep in mind. To start, you need to realistically evaluate your team and resources. It’s important to have an idea of what type of lead volume your sales force can handle. You want the users to have the best experience possible, including receiving timely follow-up if they are requesting contact. In addition, it’s helpful in planning to talk to the sales team about what types of leads they receive the most value from, which could be dependent on the type of offer(s) the user registered for, the type of online event they attended, whether or not they raised their hand for contact, etc.
Another key part of starting the lead generation program is knowing what products or campaigns will be the focus of the lead generation push. When embarking on a lead generation launch, you need to keep in mind what you’ve done with past products and how your brand is perceived. Will users understand that this is your product? Do they already trust your brand?
read more »
Posted by: Shannon Anderson, Project Manager
Social media marketing (SMM) is becoming an increasingly critical tactic in driving website traffic and staying involved in the conversation that surrounds a company’s industry. As you implement a social media campaign, it is important to track these efforts to see which sources are paying off.
Google Analytics now allows webmasters to see how users are interacting with a company’s website through the following sites:
To view this data requires Analytics add-ons, but once gleaned, it’s valuable in understanding what social bookmarking websites people are using to get to your site. Using this information, you can evaluate the target audiences of these sites and consider new ways to reach them. On some sites like Digg.com, you can even click directly to the users’ profiles who have bookmarked your site.
read more »
90octane received a 2009 Silver Key Award from the Colorado Chapter of the Business Marketing Association’s Gold Key Awards program for a strategic pay-per-click (PPC) advertising program. The conversion-driven marketing agency executed the program for Atlas Copco Construction Mining Technique USA LLC, the US sales company of the world-leading provider of industrial productivity solutions.
The program effectively targeted equipment owner/operators and brokers interested in pre-owned water well drilling equipment. 90octane developed a microsite featuring an interactive rig locator to serve as the landing page for prospects who clicked the ads. In only eight months, the program generated hundreds of qualified leads at a very low cost per lead. Efforts also resulted in high-dollar rig sales.
read more »
Posted by: Sam Eidson, Partner
What should you focus on to improve your search engine visibility? It’s a moving target and it should be customized to your competitive advantages, but here are some important factors:
- Onsite content – Make it keyword-rich, but keep it contextual for the audience. Make sure your copy is text, not images. Use headings and bullets to your advantage.
- Navigation and folder structure – Ensure navigation is standard and keyword-rich, for both search engine spiders and users. Create URLs with keyword strategy in mind.
- Backlinks – Think quality, not just quantity. Steer clear of link farms and don’t waste time building links from weak, irrelevant sites.
- Meta data – Focus your meta data efforts on creating strong, unique Title and Description on each page.
- Off-site content – In addition to backlinks, other off-site content can have a big impact. Focus on optimization and online distribution of press releases; your blog; articles the staff authors for online trade publications; listings in internet yellow pages and vertical directories; and even social networking sites.
- Site performance – Load time, proper 404 and redirect formats all play a role.
- Keyword strategy – The tactics above don’t help if you haven’t focused on the right keyphrases.