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: 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.
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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: 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: 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 »
Posted by: Jessica Shepherd, Project Manager
The much anticipated day has finally arrived. Your company’s new product is officially launching. While this is a major feat in itself, many argue that the grueling work is only just beginning.
Marketing your product is a key factor for a successful launch, and the process should begin well before the actual launch date. An increasingly critical channel for product marketing is the Web. And while the ideal situation is to have top organic listings and major presence on the major search engines from Day 1, in most cases, this is just a pipe dream. read more »
Posted by: Sam Eidson, Partner
Keyword strategy is the foundational element of a successful B2B search engine optimization (SEO) program, and it’s not easy. There are SEO tools like keyword popularity analytics to help cover the tactical bases. They can help you narrow down a keyword list, an important step to make sure you don’t spread your efforts too thin. But these techniques won’t help if the keyword strategy isn’t linked to your business growth strategy. To achieve this, use a process specific to B2B.
Start by identifying which audiences you are targeting. Identify the individuals who have a role in the purchase decision of your target organizations – not just the decision makers, but also the users, influencers and ratifiers. Think through the information that’s important to each audience, and develop informational offers (white papers, webinars, ROI calculators, etc.) that will get them to a landing page and encourage them to consider your products or solutions. Sound like a lot of effort? It is. read more »
Posted by: Shannon Denny, Senior Marketing Coordinator
You’ve implemented your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign and are thrilled to see users are clicking on your ads, but it is important to evaluate the metrics below to ensure you’re getting the most qualified users to your site and are seeing conversions from them too.
Clicks
When implementing a PPC campaign, one of your goals is to drive traffic to your site. If a user clicks on your ad, it means it stands out among your competitors and is relevant enough for the user to check it out, potentially driving a conversion. If your campaign isn’t seeing many clicks, you should evaluate the keywords you are bidding on and the messaging of your ad to make sure they are relevant. read more »
Posted by: Lauren Klostermann, Project Manager
In today’s saturated market, a competitor analysis provides an insightful and actionable look into your organization. Here’s how an analytical approach to assessing the other players in your field can begin with some basic ideas and readily available online tools.
Define the Competition
Start by choosing similar organizations in your industry by looking at each one’s size and functions. Also consider those deemed the “thought leaders” in the marketplace; they might demonstrate best practices you can learn from or mistakes you can avoid. After defining your list of competitors, assess their strengths and weaknesses, and compare those to your own.
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