Daily tip: Improve your Online search marketing
November 22nd, 2008, 1:00 am by Jan Norman, small-business columnistToday’s tip is from Jeff Werner of WebVisible, an Irvine marketing agency that specializes in online advertising programs designed for small business.
Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask and dozens of other search engines provide advertising tools to help local
businesses reach consumers when they are searching online for certain products and services.
By matching interested consumers with businesses, search engine advertising has the enormous potential to deliver highly targeted and extremely effective messages to drive dramatic sales results.
Seems simple, but there are some tips for local business marketers to help better understand the medium and more effectively execute and manage campaigns increase their chance of success.
Success is not just measured in driving traffic to your web site. Search engines make money whether you do or not. And they make it easy for you to spend money in your advertising.
Getting clicks is just the first step toward getting new customers. With all the benefits that search engines bring to marketing a small business, remember it is their job to sell their ad space, not to build your customer base. While your traffic may increase with search engine advertising, you might not notice a strong sales correlation. Building traffic to your Web site is the first step to getting new customers, but enticing them to buy your product or service is the next.
Your web site landing page needs to be consistent with your ad. Businesses with quality web sites gain the highest return on investment, a Nielsen survey found:
- 85% of people say Web site quality is an important factor in earning trust
- 77% are more likely to make a purchase from an unfamiliar business with a quality web site than a poor one from a known business
One characteristic of a quality site that maximizes conversions (turning visitors into customers) is ensuring the destination matches the promotion.
A generic home page that doesn’t speak the same language or contain the same offer as the ad runs the risk of losing visitors. Make sure the site accurately reflects your business and visitors can easily find what they’re looking for.
Is it easy to contact you? Are phone number, hours of operation, address, directions all posted prominently? Are your current promotions, specials or coupons posted with a clear, enticing call to action?
As people increasingly use the Internet for consumer research, coupled with the multiplying availability of online shopping options, the increase in choice is extending time to purchase. And a slowing economy only compounds this challenge. Plus, people like to be entertained and informed. It’s human nature.
Does the site seek to educate the consumer on your products/services in order to help them through the sales cycle? User reviews, customer testimonials and competitive reviews, product videos all can be valuable resources to establish credibility and a rapport with visitors that will bring them back and give you the best opportunity to turn them into customers.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this advice is only suited to e-commerce sites. Quite the contrary. For every $1 spent online, Internet research influences $2.56 in offline purchases, according to ROI Research, and that figure will grow to $4.68 by 2012 says BIGresearch.
Take advantage of easy-to-implement technology. Building traffic is the first step, so what happens next?
Once customers are on your site, you need to know where they go, where they spend their time on your site and what they click. Installing tracking code (many available, search on “web site tracking code”) on your site can help determine this, and which search engines, keywords, ads and campaigns are driving the most traffic.
A call-tracking phone number enables the advertiser to track which engines are delivering the highest number and most profitable conversions.
Online is dynamic advertising. Use it as such. For the small business owner, little is worse than feeling half of advertising dollars are wasted and not knowing which half.
Use the data available through the search engine campaign reports to make changes to your strategy and shift spend to the more effective ads or rework the message and/or offers. Experiment and try short-term or seasonal offers. The key is using the tools to monitor the results and using this information to make adjustments.
Take advantage of available resources. Setting up an online advertising campaign is relatively simple. Choosing the most effective keywords and writing an advertisement that captures attention and provides the best opportunity for customer engagement is another story.
And due to its dynamic nature and the need for ongoing analysis and optimization, the long-term management of online advertising can unfortunately require a larger time investment than many small business owners are able to afford. The good news is there is reliable, affordable help out there offering proven return on investment for your marketing dollar.
More Internet stories…
- Whoa! Another reason buy electronics at Costco
- MySpace MyAds challenge Google AdWords
- What are your employees viewing on the web?
- QuickBooks on your dashboard
- Site helps charities raise money online
Other local small businesses…
- 24 O.C. companies make North America’s fastest growth list
- Budget Blinds plans aggressive expansion despite economy
- O.C. attorney makes ‘most dependable’ litigators list in Forbes
- O.C. pacemaker firm get venture money
- Company’s holiday cookie sales to benefit local charity
- O.C. retailer buys 22 stores in 4 states








