your link to better business solutions

Challenges and Opportunity in Local Advertising

by on Oct 06, 2008 (0) Comments

More national advertisers are using online local advertising to generate leads and drive offline sales. The strategies for successful local online advertising are not the same as general online or search advertising and measuring results can be challenging. That’s why so many national advertisers, agencies and online advertising resellers are reaching out to partners to help them create and optimize their local online advertising strategy.

In conjunction with Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence, Marchex recently conducted a study of national advertisers across the United States who sell products and/or services through local outlets, dealers, franchises or branded stores to gain an understanding of their local online advertising strategies and tactics, challenges and best practices, as well as how they are measuring their results and return on investment (ROI).

It wasn’t all that surprising that the majority of these national advertisers – 73%, in fact – were doing digital or online marketing and nearly half of the respondents indicated they were doing some form of local online targeting. But despite the growing demand for local online marketing, geo-targeting by those surveyed rarely dipped below the state level and 45% indicated they did not use different messaging or tactics for different geographic or local markets. What’s more, the data also shows that while more than 50% of marketers are trying a number of different local sources including search engines, directories, local search engines, newspapers and vertical Web sites, managing the campaigns and generating volume are challenges.

Measuring effectiveness

This approach also hints to their difficulty in accurately measuring effectiveness. While 47% reported that at least a quarter of their in-store sales were a result of their online marketing, they cited the difficulty in measuring ROI and difficulty connecting offline sales to online marketing as two of the top challenges they are facing.

With general confusion regarding strategy, tactics and measurement, national advertisers and their agencies need to examine a set of best practices that can make or break their local advertising strategy. Virtually every local advertiser is looking to maximize ROI, increase local leads and sales, and reach a more targeted audience. And especially in our increasingly fractured local advertising market, a sharp strategy is required to accomplish all these goals.

Strategies you should know
If you’re handling your local advertising campaigns internally, a review of the following strategies will help you find an effective mix. And if you’re working with an advertising agency, ask whether they have the capability to execute these strategies for your locally focused campaigns.

  1. Diversify traffic sources beyond paid search. Search accounts for 30% of consumers’ sources of local business information. That’s a lot—but print directories account for even more: 31%. And Internet Yellow Page sites, local search sites and cell phone marketing account also account for 31%. That’s why having an advertising solution that reaches consumers using these additional online sources is essential to maximizing your marketing’s reach.
  2. Utilize localized landing pages for each location or market—and track everything. Each location, market or service area needs to be tracked separately—so you can reach your customers where they live. What’s more, landing pages should use calls-to-action that are tailored to the type of leads desired: i.e., calls, form submissions, coupons. Include local phone numbers, and specifically list the locations/service areas where you offer your products and services. By leveraging call-tracking and tracking everything on your targeted local landing pages, you gain a wealth of information about your current and prospective customers.
  3. Pick the lead types and measurement techniques best suited for your business.Customers are interacting with your Web sites in many different ways: some would rather pick-up the phone while others schedule appointments or use coupons, and some will print maps and visit your store locations. Be sure to track trends by geography or local market. Use call analytics, Form-to-Phone, and other measurements to determine lead quality and ROI.
  4. Tailor paid ads to local markets and use local phone numbers. It may be obvious, but it’s worth saying: use copy that specifies that physical location. We find greater success using messaging that suggests the value of buying nearby, along with location-specific offers and geo-modified keywords. Targeting should occur by state, region, city, and DMA. When creating ads, think about all the locations that local consumers might use to find businesses in their area to avoid missing out on potential customers.

Local online advertising is forecast to grow nearly 48% to $12.6 billion in 2008, according to Borrell Associates. Despite this high growth, the fragmentation and granularity of local advertising creates challenges for national advertisers, resellers and agencies. However, when you have these strategies in your arsenal, you’ll know where to optimize—and how to evaluate solutions that your partners present to you. That’s a strong foundation for seeing real results.

Semantic Search Engine Hakia Now Says It Can Filter Results By How Credible They Are

by on Oct 06, 2008 (0) Comments

On the Internet, nobody knows your site is a dog (to paraphrase the famous New Yorker cartoon). At least not yet. Semantic search engine Hakia wants to change that. Ask.com is not the only search engine rolling out a redesign today. So is Hakia, which is introducing tabs to its search interface. One of the tabs is “credible sites.” These are results from sites that have been vetted by librarians and information specialists (although anyone can suggest sites). So far, Hakia has built out a directory of credible sites around health, medical, and environmental issues.

The “credible” results tend to come from government, university, medical, and news sites. For instance, here are the credible results for “green buildings” and “common cold.”

The idea is if your site is a dog, it won’t get on the list. While this white-list approach could improve the quality of results, it also seems way too easy to game. Any spammer can try to get their site on the truthful and authoritative list. And they will.

Hakia’s redesign includes some other new tabs as well. Namely “news,” “images,” and “meet others.” (No, this third one is not a semantic dating service. It is a social feature that lets you join groups and discussion forums around the same topics that you are searching for). The results are all based on semantic matches within each domain. (See the screenshots below). But I am not sure how much better they are than Google’s. For instance, here is Hakia’s image search results for “global warming”. Now try the same search on Google image search. In both cases, the results are underwhelming.

Generating Leads in a Web 2.0 World

by on Oct 06, 2008 (0) Comments

Marketing is going through a revolution online, thanks to the continual adoption of the Web 2.0 concepts originally defined by Tim O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty.

If you want to see some excellent graphics and analysis explaining Web 2.0, subscribe to Ross Dawson’s blog, Trends in the Living Networks.

A New Conversation

Social networking has removed many of the obstacles that got in the way of better understanding prospects and customers, and serving them. Here are a few insights from trying to stay up with how Web 2.0 is changing how companies interact with prospects and customers:

  • Overbalance the scales with offers of knowledge, not sales hype. Instead of blasting out PDFs that tell prospects how great your company is, think about setting up weekly webinars where you invite in an industry expert that freely shares their knowledge of what’s working in the area your products, services or software deliver value. Before you dismiss this as just for the Fortune 1,000 realize that industry experts need PR coverage too and often you can get them do these in exchange for promoting their practice.
  • Define a Web 2.0 strategy now for your company and start executing on it fast. The two best bloggers in this area are Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li of Forrester who write Groundswell. These two authors, through their analysis of social networking and the Web 2.0 landscape, continually show how transparent and more connected previously isolated social networks, both in private and commercial areas, have become. What also emerges from their analysis is that when Web 2.0 technologies are used for connecting with customers, sales hype is dead. Informative, knowledgeable content that solves a complex question or problem for a customer is all that matters. Blogging to deliver solutions to customers in the form of knowledge generates real leads. It takes some companies a year or so to see any sales from this, yet it is hardly time wasted. These companies have changed how relevant they are to customers by delivering significant value without first asking for an order. Sales follow knowledge.
  • Consider your own YouTube University. Getting a channel on YouTube to upload videos that can be inexpensively produced is another approach to gaining a reputation as a company willing to share knowledge with potential and present customers. The development of your own YouTube University also needs to have periodic updates, fueling new traffic in the process. It’s a fairly large resource commitment to make, yet getting your best product experts onto your own YouTube channel can increase your company’s credibility across the industry and with prospects.
  • Work with any channel, technology or services providers to offer them participation in your trade shows and events, and vice versa. This works well as many partnerships have overlapping customer bases, yet have their own unique market segments as well. Developing this type of partnership significantly reduces the costs of trade shows and increases face-time with prospects, a critical part of lead generation.
  • Understand that Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) AdWords is only as effective as your landing pages, lead management process and continual managing of keywords. Google has delivered some exceptional tools in this area during 2008, including the ability to optimize a landing page design by testing it iteratively before its launched. This is the largest lead generation strategy for many technology companies, and their continually improving of landing pages and key words generates significant results.

Knowledge Is Power

I’ve not spent years studying lead generation, yet what I have seen is that many companies are still doing very well with leads despite news about the economy this year.I’m convinced it’s because they have worked very hard using the strategies discussed here to get and stay relevant to prospects and customers. They’re delivering more knowledge, value, insight and intelligence than anyone else.

As a result, they’re trusted more and sales happen. Lead generation cannot be reduced to a series of causal factors; it all begins with trust in your company. In a Web 2.0 World, earning and retaining that trust is much more about offering insight and knowledge first.

Developing Internal Links and Authority With SEO

by on Oct 05, 2008 (1) Comments

Instead of trying to make a one size fits all argument out of SEO, understand that rankings are a by product of multiple factors unified for a common goal.

SEO should never be an afterthought, but rather a means to produce a specific attainable goal for generating and measuring traffic to your content which can be monetized through sales, lead generation or advertising/visibility for your brand.

Rankings are Produced by the Page

Keep one thing in mind, rankings are produced by the page, so the more quality pages you have, written with specific intent around 3-5 singular, plural or synomic phrases when interlinked with other related / supporting pages is often more than enough to tip the scales in your favor.

Chronology and authority add trust and reduce the time frame for new content to scale the SERPs (search engine result pages). Those pages however, still must have the needed ingredients to stand on their own once the initial evaluation has gleaned their relevance in comparison to the rest of your site vs. your competitors.

Those whose content fits more accordingly to the guidelines of search engine algorithms will rank higher with the least effort.

Your competition is irrelevant if your contents quality and links are impeccable, authority status is the goal for your website algorithmically, but it must still be appealing for the masses or your preferred audience to “get the clicks is deserves”.

The Fallacy of Keywords

If you elect to target a series of competitive keywords, be aware that the more competitive the phrase, the more time and energy you will have to invest in acquiring it.

This is why you obviously want to allocate a portion of your energy to the top tier keywords and key phrases that yield the mother lode of traffic, yet crafting a number of secondary and tertiary terms is a solid strategy for funneling pre-qualified visitors. The argument about keywords that are too broad not being worth their salt truly depends on the industry.

Most insist that one word keywords typically attract those interested in research vs. consumers that are further along in the sales cycle who use additional descriptive modifiers to hone in on a particular GEO location, product or service.

That really depends on the industry, we know for example that hitting the top 10 for SEO (since our industry is all about placement and results) can drive 70% of the total traffic for your website on any given hour, which is why getting back to the top 10 is our #1 priority. Currently we are in the top 15, but that simply is not good enough to make a definitive statement.

A website targeting the words “real estate” or “shopping” however, may not find the effort was worth it, due to the type of people typing this in are using far too nebulous a keyword they will ultimately require some refinement and additional keywords to zero in on their ideal document / webpage.

One solid method however is to:

1) start with your on page SEO factors and internal linking first instead of trying to put lipstick on a pig and pass it off as relevance. Here is a nifty little internal linking tool we developed in house for finding the best internal link / landing pages in a site.

2) Look for ways to expedite trust and website authority and create a healthy balance of internal and external links. Here are a few references for internal link building and how to augment your site from within.

3) Constantly look for new ways to leverage the internal link dynamo / juggernaut effect your own website is capable of producing like its own superconductor (once it is charged with topical relevance).

In closing, remember rankings are by the page, if your position is low on the totem pole then (1) strengthen internal linking (2) look for authority sites for inbound links (even social bookmarks will do) and (3) create a silo of related content (5-10 pages on the topic) to create the appropriate on page indicators needed to warrant search engines awarding you with a higher position.

Manage these three steps with patience and persistence, choose a tight enough niche of semantically aligned keywords and give each page enough time to find its stride (30-90 days) and your concerns about higher rankings will have subsided as you now have a solid strategy to engage in the even that your position (for your existing content) losing its footing.

Building a Profitable Web 2.0 Web Site

by on Oct 03, 2008 (0) Comments

Competition for building a profitable Web site is quite fierce. Yet many of us have dreams of a unique concept that will attract viewers, followed soon thereafter by advertisers. I’m not sure what percentage of aspirants succeed in this quest, but I would venture to guess that it’s a very low percentage.

With the evolution of the Web to the Web 2.0, the task becomes even a bit more challenging. For those who aren’t familiar with the term Web 2.0, Wikipedia can help out: “Web 2.0 is a living term describing changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and Web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the Web …” The complete definition also mentions video sharing sites.

Though the competition is fierce in the Web 2.0 space, it’s encouraging to see a recently formed company quickly create critical mass, thus attracting advertisers and creating a cash flow in less than a year of operation. That company is As Seen On TV.Info, a privately held startup.

A Winning Business Model

It all starts with a winning business model. (Business models are discussed in my article for the E-Commerce Times titled “Why Startups Fail.”) As Seen on TV.Info’s (ASOTVI) business model is unique in several respects.

It creates side-by-side video viewing of an actual Direct Response Television (DRTV) product offered for sale with a critical review of that product. This capability leverages online video technology to visually contrast the major claims of vendor infomercials with reality. Additionally, it does this with a patent-pending, Web 2.0 approach that uniquely provides objective online “You Tube-styled” video reviews, posted in parallel (via Flash Video players) alongside product vendors’ infomercials, thus allowing consumers to see for themselves what products can really do, and what they can’t do.

You might wonder who will be advertising on this Web site. The CEO of the company, Robert Gelinas, told me that he will not accept any advertisement from a company whose product does not pass vetting. In other words, if the product doesn’t work as advertised, ASOTVI will not accept advertising dollars from its manufacturer. He also made it clear that ASOTVI publishes negative reviews whenever warranted and that “no one gets a pass” with a review that isn’t merited. He added that reviews are published at the company’s discretion.

ASOTVI has found a unique niche for itself in that no other independent, objective review organization exists for what is one of the largest segments of the retail industry, DRTV. This segment is noted for its hype and exaggerated claims, as most TV viewers can attest.

An advantage to viewers who want to check on a product is that they can do so at no cost and without cumbersome registration. All they have to do is go to the site and check out the product, assuming that there is a review of the product of their choice.

Revenue Streams Are Important

Of course, a Web-based company needs a steady flow of revenue to survive. ASOTVI’s business model calls for a cost-per-click (CPC) advertising model that comes from either a product’s Review Page, a Run-of-the-Site (ROTS) campaign, or both. Additionally, the company will generate revenue through Cost-Per-Action (CPA) campaigns that flow through associated affiliate networks. Thus, ASOTVI generates revenues from product reviews, even if a product’s vendor doesn’t choose to commission an advertising campaign.

Gelinas noted that a significant part of the projected revenue stream of the company are the numerous retailers of both As Seen on TV products and competitive products. He then added that the site draws large numbers of visitors who have much in common, making them a targeted audience for retailers. As DRTV campaigns mature, the products are then picked up by mass market retailers who in turn feature select displays of As Seen on TV products appropriate to their own merchandising programs.

From my perspective, the retailers can state in their advertisements that, unlike television commercials, customers can see the actual products on display for themselves, along with a parallel review of same.

Getting Products to Review

There are so many products advertised in the DRTV space that one has to wonder how the company gets products to review. I asked this question of Gelinas. He told me that vendors actually send ASOTVI samples of their products which the company then reviews. ASOTVI thereafter produces 2-minute product review videos at no charge to the vendors.

The company has targeted consumer-related product companies and retailers. The greatest present interest in advertising on the ASOTVI site obviously comes from the companies whose products have been favorably reviewed. These companies commission advertising campaigns for their products.

Thus, each time that ASOTVI favorably reviews a product, it creates a potential advertising client. So long as that review stays on the company’s site, the manufacturer of the product remains a potential, if not actual, advertiser. And, the more products that ASOTVI reviews, the larger its advertising clientele becomes. This advertising base will expand in the future, as explained above.

It is indeed a rare instance when a business can identify a niche, a vacuum, so well. This talent has enabled ASOTVI to create a critical mass of advertisers by reviewing (at no cost to manufacturers) company products, thus creating advertising revenue by posting video reviews on its site of actual products that have appeared on TV. And the video review, as mentioned above, is conveniently placed right next to the manufacturer’s video of its product.

I went to the site and first looked at a manufacturer’s TV advertisement of its product, then clicked on the review of the product to see if the claims matched up. I found browsing through the site and being able to get “both sides” of a product’s story quite user friendly.

What Does it Take to Create Amazing SEO Results?

by on Oct 02, 2008 (0) Comments

Although the definition of amazing is unique to each individual, we know that getting quality traffic from SEO results is half the battle, yet once consumers reach your site, that traffic still must convert.

Search engines deliver pre-qualified traffic based on the premise that anxious consumers are already searching for products and services. However, depending on their needs and objectives, the urgency of the situation and the appeal/solution presented from your pages, each facet must create the perfect synergy to yield a successful return on investment.

It is easy to get tunnel vision and overlook the basic needs of your preferred audience or rely on one marketing method instead of diversifying your approach. Fortunately websites are scalable as well as content and design are pliable to accommodate change.

Below are three primary factors that search engines reward with links to articles that provide more depth about the topic. In summary, by successfully managing chronology, topical relevance and search engine trust your web pages will always hit their mark in the top 10 and rise to the top.

The Three Primary SEO Factors Are:

Time - the longer your online the better. Credibility and trust are often synonymous variables when algorithmic assessments scrutinize your website.

Resources:

Relevance – Does your site have 1 page or 100 pages on the topic?, 10 quality links or 10,000 low quality links? All of this matters to search engines. With every node of search engine algorithms, there is another layer of redundancy to cross reference that variable with another to ascertain validity. If you want to acquire a top ranking, your content must have relevant context to deliver to the end user, otherwise your pages will be overlooked as the optimal solution to the majority of keywords that convert from consumers search engine queries.

Resources:

Trust - just like in the real world, you have to earn it. This by far is one of the most human aspects of search engines, trust equals traffic, trust equals engagement and trust equals authority. Although you can expedite the process, you still have to develop key indicators over time consistently to gain the approval of instantly ascending the rankings unchallenged, which is a by product of search engine trust.

Resources:

What does amazing imply to you, would that mean tripling your traffic within 3 months? Increasing lead generation by 400% or having a popular authority site that catapults everything you publish to the top 10, 20 and 30 results without effort?

If so, then think ahead of the curve, plan for the future by viewing each page of your website as a holistic piece of the puzzle and above all else add quality content frequently to stay in the graces of search engine spiders as they crawl the web for useful information.

We hope you enjoy the resources, there is no substitute for quality. So, instead of trying to rank before you understand the needs of your audience, take a step back and think about the long-term benefits of your optimization strategy if you want long-lasting SEO results.