WSI Internet Marketing

I don’t often defer to my colleagues to read my mind and post their articles instead of mine, but in this case I’ll make an exception. My friend and colleague Kimberly Nichols wrote one of the best, most concise articles on “SEO Guarantee Scams and How to Avoid Them” that I’ve read in a while.

Unfortunately not all Digital Marketers have your best interest in mind. They typically come in several flavors: Those with current knowledge, those with outdated knowledge, and those who abuse their knowledge. I can’t tell you how many clients came to us perplexed as to why their reports looked so good, yet their phone wasn’t ringing.

Case in point is an article I recently wrote: “Don’t let the “S” in SEO stand for Sucker” detailing an actual client that was intentionally misled by a classic “bait-and-switch” with his keywords. The company in question served themselves a “softball” simply by making long tail keyword phrases even longer in his monthly reports so they can meet their guarantee.

Legitimate Digital Marketing Experts will educate you as to what their strategy is, and not pull any punches as to what you can and can’t reasonably expect. Naturally you should expect a keyword placement report on a regular basis, but understand that is only part of the equation. It shows progress that the SEO Company should be using for themselves to show trends and progress, not absolutes. More to the point would be the actual analytics reports showing actual traffic and what keywords drove the traffic.

Keyword selection should address 4 components:

1. Relevance: Are the phrases that are targeted actually relevant to your business…or just easy to obtain?
2. Popularity: Are the keyword phrases that are being targeted actually searched on in sufficient volume to drive sales.
3. Acceptable levels of competition: Is there a reasonable expectation that first page rankings are obtainable? This is where a legitimate “long tail keyword” strategy comes into play.
4. Monetization: Can you actually make money and grow your business by driving consumers to your website by targeting those phrases?

Do yourself a favor and read Kimberly’s article. And as she says at the end of that article: “If it looks too good to be true…”

When it comes to Digital Marketing, the tools we’ve had to work with have always been interesting, but this one is actually way more fun than most.  Limited only by your imagination, it’s essentially free and almost anyone can adopt it!

QR Codes (abbreviation for “Quick Response” Code) is a digital image that virtually anyone with a Smartphone can instantly scan and immediately go to a webpage, download specific information, add you to their contact list…or go to almost any digital destination. It’s kind of a barcode scanner for everyone.

There have got to be hundreds of different applications for QR Codes. Some are obvious, and some are just functional. You don’t have to be clever…but where is the fun in that? Here are 7 ideas literally off the top of my head:

1: Your Website: This is a bit obvious, so think it through… If your prospect is already on your site, you could give them access to a special mobile enabled special offer page that can only be accessed with their phone. Or you could just set it so they could conveniently download your contact information.

2: Business Cards & Flyers: Sure, this is one of the more obvious places to take advantage of the technology, but there are so many ways you can leverage it. You could link it to the home page of your website, or better yet a “Special Offer” page that can only be accessed through the QR Code. Just make sure it is a mobile enabled page because the only way it will be viewed is on the miniature screen of a smart phone. You could simply set it up to download your contact info into your prospects Smartphone (where it belongs in the first place).

3: Social Media Badges: Why not use it as a profile image on your Facebook business page, or as your Skype image, or as a secondary logo on your LinkedIn profile?

4: Tee-Shirts: OK, now we’re getting clever. Think about your entire staff buzzing around your tradeshow booth with oversized QR codes emblazoned across the front of their shirts. That by itself would be an attention getter… but the sight of other event goers continuously pointing their phones in your direction might garner some attention as well. Linking the QR code to an “event only” special would be the perfect payoff.

5: Menus: A restaurant could simply post the QR code outside the entrance so a patron could just scan and go and check what’s on the menu at their convenience. If the menu is on a mobile enabled webpage it could constantly be updated so the next time the patron checks in, the menu is up to date with the latest dishes and prices. To encourage people to check the mobile menu more often, the restaurateur could post mobile only specials and coupons that can only be accessed through the mobile version.

6: Urban Art: OK, graffiti… Could you really resist scanning some hi-tech tagging on the side of a wall or on the door of your office, shop or store?

Tattoos & Tombstones: Admittedly this takes a bit of commitment. Why not tattoo one on your body? Nothing embodies permanent proof of temporary insanity like a tattoo. Speaking of “permanent”, nothing says forever like chiseling your final epitaph on your eternal resting spot. Now that’s commitment!

Here is a little step-by-step guide on setting up a QR Code. Of course in many cases you might need help in setting up a mobile enabled website or specific mobile web page. Your Kreative Webworks team can help you with that.

Web Presence Optimization is all about being in more places with more content to get in front of more people. Consumers used to spend a lot of time on a few media choices. Now they spend a little time on a lot of media choices. The trick is to get in front of as many of the “right” people as you can.

Here is a unique approach:

Get yourself an Internet based radio show, interview a bunch of influential people, and have them send the link on to their influential friends.

Sounds like a long shot doesn’t it? Ironically it is becoming a bit of a trend. I was recently interviewed twice by two unrelated interview programs here in Orange County California.

The most recent was just a couple of weeks ago by Will Crist of “Pilgrim on the 405”, a live drive-time radio show catering to commuters on the 405 freeway traveling through Orange County. You can listen to Will’s interview; Pilgrim Talks: Chuck Bankoff and Mark Friedman to get an idea of the format.

The first was just a few days earlier by veteran journalist Tony DeMaio of Big Media USA on the realities and myths of Search Engine Optimization. In fact, I’m working with Tony to take the concept on a test ride myself with my own radio show.

Does the concept work? Well, after I was interviewed I posted this article on blogs, Facebook and Twitter and you’re reading it.

One thing that many businesses overlook is how important offline conversions are. When reviewing the success of your SEM program, you should remember that often times people find you on the internet, but choose to visit your place of business or simply call instead of using the internet to make their conversions. Offline conversions can be hard to track, but if you are not tracking them, the ROI data for your online campaign will not be accurate and might cause you to under-budget your SEM program.

Phone Lead Measuring Techniques:

Through our research and analysis, we have found a few effective methods to measure your phone leads that are a direct result of your online marketing. Here are a few of them:
Campaign On / Campaign Off: The way this method works is that you can see how many calls you are getting over a set period of time with your campaign on, and then turn it off and see if you are getting the same amount or fewer calls. You can do this a few times in order to really get an idea of where your phone calls are coming from.

Multiple Phone Numbers: When running a PPC campaign, the landing pages can have a different phone number than the rest of the site. The only down side to this is that occasionally an individual will find you through your PPC campaign, but then revisit the site using your main url. While this method is not 100% accurate, it provides and easy way to determine the general success of your marketing campaigns.
Telephone Tracking Software: This method can be extremely helpful especially when running mixed media campaigns. What it does is assign different unique phone numbers for each search engine. If you wanted to also track beyond media vendor, you can assign coupon codes or extensions at the listing level. You can also utilize pop up software that has the ability to initiate a call or voice chat that would be fielded by a sales person. The only downside to this method is that often people have pop up blockers enabled.

Dynamic Reverse Proxy: My personal preference is an intelligent system that that can differentiate the source of the visitor to the site. Depending on which source, the visitor will see a different phone number. Your phone would ring just as it normally does, but all the calls will be tracked, the phone number of the caller, and the length of time the call lasted will be recorded. Not only that, the actual voice conversation with your sales rep will be recorded as well for playback on demand.

Obviously phone calls that are generated from your Internet marketing efforts are among your top KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Several of these methods are very easy and you can probably handle them yourself. You might want to seek the advice of a certified Digital Marketing Consultant to really leverage the techniques and technology.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are the metrics most indicative of how well your internet marketing campaign is performing. These are the big things that “move the needle”.

For example; if you have a high “Bounce Rate” (visitors come to your website and never go beyond the landing page) that is an indication that there is an issue with the relevance of your landing page to the visitor.

There is no one set of standard KPI’s for every business, it really depends on what your objectives are. For example, if you are in a service related industry, the amount of phone calls generated by your online efforts would be a primary KPI. Digging a little deeper, the length of each phone call would tell you even more. Short phone calls (under a minute) might mean that no one answered the phone and no message was left. Longer phone calls are a good indication of customer engagement.

“Time on Site” is often an indicator of how relevant and engaging your site is. “Pages Visited” may indicate if your sales funnel is set up properly. The impact of any particular KPI may not be readily obvious. It often takes some insight to look past the numbers to find their true meaning.

Key Performance Indicators are somewhat unique to each type of business, and their individual objectives, but here are a few that I consider relatively universal:

Some KPI Definitions

Visit – This is when someone visits one or more of your web pages with 30 min or less time in between page visits.

Visitor – A visitor is a person that visits your website. Visitors can be broken into 3 categories:

1. New Visitor – This is only measured once for visitors who have never been on your website before. It is different than a unique visit because a unique visit is measured over a specific period of time.
2. Repeat/Returning Visitor – This is a person who visits your website two or more times over a given period of time, this is only measured once over that given period of time.
3. Unique Visitor – A unique visitor is a person tat comes to your website for the first time during a specific window of time. Usually daily, weekly or monthly.

Conversion – Conversion is when a visitor or customer completes the action that you want them to take, for instance, making a purchase or filling out a web form.

Examples of Some Key Performance Indicators

General KPI

• Average Time on Site – This is based on the assumption that if a person searches for a particular keyword or phrase, and they visit a page on your site, if it has relevance to what they were looking for, they will spend more time on that page than if they found information that was not very relevant to their search.
• Page Views / Visit – This will tell you how many pages a visitor to your website views on each visit. Multiple page visits will affect this multiple times.
• Page Views / Visitors – This is very similar to page views / visits except that it ignores the amount of visits that a specific visitor makes.
• New Visitors / Visitors – Measures how many of your visitors are first time visitors; this is good for telling you how many new potential clients/customers are visiting your site.
• Repeat Visitors / Visitors – Shows you how many of your visitors are returning, therefore showing you the site’s ability to attract visitors or customers back to your web site.

The Importance of KPI – Taking KPI to the Next Level

Developing the best KPI for your internet marketing goals will allow you to measure how well your different strategies are working to positively affect your business objectives. They can give you a warning sign to let you know what is working and what isn’t working. Once you are able to determine the results from examining your KPI, you can make the important adjustments to fine tune your sites effectiveness.

KPI’s may require more analysis than meets the eye. You might want to enlist the services of a professional digital marketing specialist. Sometimes it’s just a matter of interpreting your current data, and other times actual experiments might need to be setup to measure cause and effect of incremental changes. Professional Digital Marketing consultants with the right tools can even do a Competitive Analysis on the KPIs of direct competitors in your industry.

For some, “Social Media Optimization” is a buzz phrase with no definition. You know that you have to “do” Facebook, or that you have to Blog, but face it; you don’t really have a plan do you?  The fact is that everyone is migrating to social media, whether they know it or not. Whenever you go online to see what other people are doing or what they recommend, you are leveraging Social Media whether you know it or not. If you use Social Media for business, why not take full advantage of a population of users that exceeds most major counties?

1. Focus On What Is Important

One of the most important things you can do is listen to what your customers are saying on their social media posts. This will help you gain a better understanding for their needs. Connect with them; see what they are up to. This will help you have a better understanding of what you can do to help them.

2. Personalities and Style Make a BIG Difference

When using social media tools like Facebook or Twitter, the two most dynamic ingredients for success are personality and style. This is often what makes the difference between a post and a viral post. It can also give you more credibility when it comes to being a trusted source in your industry.

3. Implement Good Habits In Your Strategies

Making sure your policies, guidelines and structure matches your company’s size. What may work for a smaller company won’t necessarily work with a large company. You will need to adjust these to fit your needs as your company grows. You will want your team to exhibit qualities that enhance your relationship with customers. Customers value quick, consistent and well-spoken responses and posts.

4. Rules and Regulations?

You will find that having a few rules and guidelines regarding your social media strategies will seem more and more necessary as your company grows. Keep in mind that every situation is different and that your may have to bend the rules when necessary. Trust your team’s intuition; don’t blindly lead wit a book of rules and regulations.

5. Utilize Metrics

In order to effectively manage you social media strategies, you should pay attention to metrics and tie in the social media aspect to you overall business goals. When starting up a brand new project, you should determine what metrics and goals you should set before getting started.

Wondering where to start with Social Media for your business? Let us offer you a Social Media readiness evaluation. We examine your company goals along with your existing assets to determine what is the best media and the best strategy for you.

Just like the IRS insists that you separate your personal finances from your business finances, the same is true with your Facebook Personal page and your Facebook Business Page. Sure, it’s OK to have fun on your business page, in fact it’s desirable, but at the end of the day, it does represent your business.

There are entire whitepapers ready to write themselves about the type of content to post on your business page, marketing the pages, etc., but I want to focus on now is the branding of your page.

The average Facebook user is a fan of 9 Fan Pages. 41% of them use Fan Pages to let their friends know what products they like and support. With those types of numbers, it may be worth the effort to “spruce up” your page a bit.

At a minimum, you should upload a profile picture that tells your followers who you are and what you have to offer. Your logo is a good choic

e, but you can do better than that. For example, if you have a single store location you could put your address and hours of operation right on the photo.

Here is an example of our profile or “badge”. We have decided that I am the “Voice of the Company”, so we use my image to represent our firm. The information on our badge works for us. You have to decide how your company should be positions, and what images and information your want to spotlight.

Notice that we have a “Find us on Facebook” icon on the bottom of the badge. It may seem a little unnecessary considering that you may already be on Facebook when you see this. However we can use this badge in a number of different web properties to help build our fan base.

The next step up if you really want to make an impression is to design a custom Tab page. Below is our custom “Welcome” page. This is what we link to from other web properties and other Social Media:

Finally, you might even consider custom or out-of-the-box aps. Check out this one from Old Navy, where you can actually “dig” for your own coupon:

As you can see, with a little imagination, some graphical expertise and perhaps some professional programming, you can go a long way in branding your company on the worlds reigning Internet destination.

No I’m not talking about a contract hit or an intervention. I’m talking about looking at a more appropriate way to measure your online marketing ROI.

A typically mistake most marketers make is to overlook the amount of revenue a customer brings in over the lifetime relationship. This info is important to track because it indicates how valuable each new customer is, and what it is worth spending to attract them. It also lets you know just how good your customer retention program is and how much you should invest in that.

The simple way to measure the Average lifetime value of a customer is:  Total value of sales / Total number of customers.

Once you have an idea about how profitable each new customer is likely to be, you can make better decisions about allocating your online marketing budget. If the lifetime value of a new client is very high, then you can afford higher acquisition costs to obtain new customers.

One of our clients, Chris, from Oregon Mushrooms grasped this concept immediately. Years ago she told me that she didn’t care if she lost a little bit of money on each new customer because her product was unique, her service was great, and the average customer reordered every few months indefinitely.

In fact, we’ve been running her PPC and SEO programs for years, and over time her cost per acquisition has actually gone down as we fine-tuned her Pay-Per-Click program and our Search Engine Optimization efforts have matured.

I’m thinking the “intervention” should be reserved for the business that doesn’t measure the lifetime value of a new client. Oh-and Chris? She never did lose money on any of her Internet Marketing efforts.

We run a tremendous amount of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns for our clients. Sometimes it’s part of an integrated marketing strategy, sometimes it’s for initial data collection prior to launching an organic Search Engine Optimization Campaign, and sometimes it is a standalone strategy.

Sooner or later our clients discover that they show up on the search results for their own name and they want to know why we are bidding on something that no one else would want. Well there are actually two reasons:

• Search Engine Marketing
• Reputation Management

We run hundreds of search marketing campaigns and view just as many analytics reports, and I can tell you a good portion of searches are for their own business name and even the names of individuals in their business.

Why? Because it is the fastest, easiest way to locate your contact info or to research your company. It is also the easiest way to run a free background check on your business (or on you). What shows up on those search results is also known as your online reputation and can persuade a consumer to purchase your product or service, or buy from one of your competitors.

Bidding on your business category is obvious when it comes to search engine marketing (ex: Los Angeles maid service) if you want to show up in a paid ad when someone is looking for your type of products or services. However it’s just as important to bid on your own business name keywords (ex: “Mary’s maid service”). Here are some reasons why:

Your Competition:
Why should you bid on your own name? Because your competition is! By some accounts leading brands only receive about 87% of traffic from their business name keyword searches. The remaining 13% are “poached” by their competitors. Why? Because a popular brand name makes for great search bait! Even if you are not yet a household name, there are people searching for you. Do you really want them to find your direct competitors instead?

Search Page Domination:
There is a good chance that you will show up towards the top of the organic search results for your own business name simply because your business name is probably prominent throughout the website content. However Google tells us that when you show up in both the natural results and the paid results the click-through-rate (CTR) is expediential… not just the sum of both. Why? Well for one thing every time you show up on the first page, you just displaced someone else. But more importantly you just branded the page with your presence.

Manage the Message:
Paid listings offer a precise degree of control over exactly what the search results say, and exactly what page on your website it links to. Someone searching for your business by name can now be directed to a special landing page promoting a seasonal special, new product or services or even a rewards or discount program. If they were looking for you in the first place, controlling what they see is a huge opportunity to convert them in to your next customer.

Common Business Names:
I just searched for “john smith productions” and there were well over 9,000,000 search results! Unfortunately for John Smith number eleven, only the first 10 guys will ever get any traffic. But there is hope for John Smith eleven… there was absolutely zero paid search results. That means even John Smith number nine million could jump to the head of the line for just pennies per click.

Cost Effective Placement:
Lots of businesses in your space are bidding on the same business category keywords, but only a handful of devious competitors may bid on your name. In most cases the search engines will realize that it is actually your name, and give you the best position at the best price because they deem you more relevant.

Reputation Management:
A negative review looks worse when there are lots of them. The trick it to dilute negative results with more positive results to diffuse the overall impact. Bidding on your name (and variations thereof) is a no brainer.

The Big Boys Know why:
Well if you are not convinced by now, consider that even the biggest brands such as Walmart, Apple and Verizon bid on their own keywords. It’s not like they wouldn’t show up on the top of the organic results for their own brand names. Yet they understand the value of locking out their competition by dominating the search engine results page. They’ve paid marketing companies millions of dollars to figure this out. Now you didn’t have to pay anything…

OK…so you’re running a responsible, reputable business and you catch your bookkeeper with her hands in the till. You fire her…as you should, and threaten prosecution.

Next thing you know negative reviews about you and/or your company start showing up on Yelp, or whatever review sites are out there for you particular industry (and there are more out there than you realize). Counterfeit Facebook pages using your name and making you look like a jerk start showing up in the search results. If you are looking for a real life example check out this reputation nightmare.

Whether you’ve been victimized as an innocent business owner… or you really are a jerk is irrelevant. Your reputation, and now your business is at stake.

Reputation Management is something that must be monitored and managed, and besides…it just sounds cool. In any event it is one of the most unambiguous terms regarding the Internet that I can think of. There is nothing pretentious about it.

Where do you start?

Well let’s start by getting past the denial phase:

• First; you might actually be a jerk. Come to terms with that and seek help.
• Second; you are now officially in a world of hurt. Come to terms with that and seek help.

The Internet is forever. Nothing goes away…it can only be buried by other information that is deemed more relevant or more current by the search engines or it may be “diluted” by more favorable postings on review sites. The trick is to push negative results off the first page of search results, or dilute negative comments with a slew of positive recommendations.

The antidote is fairly time consuming, but the alternative is most certainly devastating. We monitor countless amounts or data for our clients, and you would be shocked by how many searches are conducted specifically on the name of an individual or the name of the company instead of just the service they offer.

Stay tuned. Because over the next week or so I’m going to go over a few things you can do for yourself, and some things that are best left for a professional reputation management company.