SEO & Social Media to Capture ZMOT

We continuously receive questions about the position of SEO within the internet marketing space.  It is true that the waters between SEO and Social media have been merged to some degree, but the result is still relevant results within the search engines.  Also, the mentality of users is still roughly the same: a stimulus-like an email campaign and search for more information.  The recent eBook “Winning the Zero Moment of Truth” (ZMOT) by Jim Lecinski provides further insight into the new mental model. 

Shifting the focus to the mentality of the user has come full circle.  The ability to align SEO and Social Media within your marketing plan will help you attract customers at the ZMOT, but doing so takes a solid strategy and communication from your SEO & Social Media teams.  It’s not enough to implement SEO & Social Media into the plan; what’s more important is that these elements align to attract customers.

Effectiveness of Email Marketing

If you’re looking for an increased return on investment regarding your marketing efforts look no further. When it boils down to it, the most effective marketing channel is still Email Marketing, as indicated in the chart below. The best thing about email marketing is that it gets better as you use it. Once you have the basics, consistent branding, list building, message crafting, and email delivery, you’ll be able to increase the effectiveness. According to a JupiterResearch report, using Web analytics to target email campaigns can produce nine times the revenues and eighteen times the profits of broadcast mailings. With all that being said, implementing sophisticated analytics and tactics such as segmentation, targeting, multichannel integration, A/B testing and social sharing is the best place to start. Nonetheless, it’s almost a no brainer when it comes to using email marketing. Whether you are doing it in-house, just using the basics, or whether you outsource it to an internet marketing agency, for sophisticated analytics and tactics, Email Marketing is an opportunity you can’t pass up.

PPC Advertising > Keywords + Ad Copy; Don’t Forget about the Landing Pages

Testing is a crucial part of improving your PPC advertising efforts. You test Keywords to enhance targeting and increase relevant traffic to your site. You test Negative Keywords to prevent irrelevant clicks and lower cost. Testing Ad Copy is to find out what appeals best to your clientele. However, testing should not stop there. Your Landing Page is a critical component of obtaining conversions, and not just clicks.

If you have tested and found great Keywords and have excellent Ad Copy, then there is no doubt that, you are getting clicks and driving relevant traffic to your site. However, what is happening after that still has a huge impact on the success of your PPC efforts. Your Landing Page is the first experience a potential customer has with your website. It needs to aesthetically pleasing, easy to navigate, and a good starting point for your conversion funnel.

In order to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of your Landing Pages, you will need to integrate your Analytical Solution with you PPC Platform. Once you have the Analytics in place, you can begin testing your Landing Pages with tools, like Web Optimizer. Test various wording, layouts, pictures and more to discover what works best for you and your clientele, and watch your ROI increase.

Your Trademark = My Keyword

Recently, a California Appeals Court ruled that it is legal (as least for now) to use competitors’ trademarks as keywords. Although it is legal, that does not mean you should run out add your competitors’ names, or other trademark terms, to your keyword list. Google Adwords and others give keywords a quality score based on how relevant the term is to your products/services and the landing page of your ads. Assuming that your site is tightly optimized for your specific products/services, then adding competitors’ trademark as a keyword will generate low quality score. This low quality score will result in your ads not being shown, average Cost-Per-Click increasing, and/or ad rank dropping. Although adding competitors’ trademark terms to your keyword list will get more impressions for your ads, specifically when someone is searching for a competitor, is it worth it? This answer may vary depending on the industry, the competitor, and even the location. Before, you start having your ads appear for your competitor’s trademarks, make sure that it is worth the time and effort. My point being, trademark or not, do research and test keywords and make sure that it is worth the time and effort to implement them it into your keyword list, and continue to monitor and measure performance to ensure results.

Marketing. Measuring. Testing. Results!

DaBrian Marketing Group LLC.

Increase Marketing Effectiveness With Web Analytics

When it comes to marketing your product or service, it is best practice to determine who your target audience is, both demographically and geographically. You figure out who you want to market your product or service to, and then where to market it.

When it comes to traditional marketing, it can sometimes be difficult to determine how effective your marketing campaign is, or how many people view it. With internet marketing, however, it is possible to not only determine who is viewing your website, but where they are from, and how much they interacted with your website. With web analytics, you can find all of this information, as well as:

· How much those visitors interacted with your website.

· What traffic sources they came from.

· Where they went after landing on your page.

· Success of e-commerce transactions.

· Determine whether those visitors are generating ROI on your site.

Internet marketing does not stop the moment you launch your shiny new website. It is an ongoing and continuous process, which benefits greatly from being monitored. Implementing web analytics tracking and reporting can provide the key insight to get your results.

Are You Using Social Media to Increase Your Business Exposure?

Social media marketing is being used to increase awareness for organizations within their target market. According to eMarketer.com, businesses have been accomplishing their goals regarding social media marketing tactics. For the most part, social media is a useful tool for increasing awareness, attracting new customers, and engaging with current customers.

The most important part is whether or not the tactics are aligned with the business goals and objectives. Businesses have achieved their objectives, but are you seeing the value in generating leads, sales, and revenue for the business? What is the ROI for your social media marketing campaign? Doing the social networking and getting a customer to become a fan of your business on Facebook is great, but are you seeing the benefits in your wallet?

Benefits of Web Analytics for Businesses

Online marketing has become a massive industry over the past decade or so. Its importance for the future growth of companies cannot be overstated. As web traffic continues to increase, web analytics becomes an invaluable tool for business and marketing managers. Web analytics allows companies to gather useful data about the impact their websites and products have on their customers.

With some marketing strategies, it can take time to see relevant results that come directly from a specific promotion. As web analytics continues to grow and change, this problem begins to disappear. With different metrics and analytical methods, it is possible to quickly see what strategies are effective and which ones may need some tweaking. For example, it is very beneficial for improving one’s marketing strategy to see which pages have a high bounce rate or which have high average time-on-page measurements.

It is undoubtedly becoming necessary to have an online presence in the current business world. Through the use of web analytics, businesses can manage their websites effectively and with the highest profit from their investment. The bottom line is that web analytics can help any business grow rapidly, robustly and in a way that ensures they stay relevant into the future.

Web Analytics Trends for 2010

It is becoming increasingly important for companies to employ web analytics in their online marketing strategies. Web analytics is a continuously growing industry despite the recent tough times that many businesses are currently facing. This has made it obvious that web analytics is here to stay and can help companies to reinvent their brand in a changing business environment.

As analytical metrics become more advanced, the basic numbers behind web usage begin to say less than advanced information on the consumers that represent these numbers. A common trend in web analytics is an overall increasingly personalized content of the measurements. Through this approach, companies can have a useful idea of their target and actual audiences and this information is useful in that it can be incorporated into new and improved marketing campaigns!

Social media will play a growing role in the future of marketing, as well. Web analytics will track how successful different social networking sites are at sending buyers to a site; also, mobile devices are being used more and more to access the web, so the necessary web content formatting is critical. Web analytics has a growing impact on the way everyday business is done and the current trends show that it is a necessary component to successful business on the web!

A/B Testing: Small Business Competitive Advantage?

We are aware of numerous companies that do not utilize A/B or Split testing as a marketing tactic. In some cases, smaller local businesses can capitalize on this opportunity. A/B testing, or split testing, is a method of testing advertising, in which a baseline control sample is compared to a variety of single-variable test samples in order to improve response rates. This testing method is often used to measure which single variable is most effective in increasing response rates or conversion rates. Many large scale corporations do not allocate significant resources to A/B testing within smaller local markets. By using A/B testing, local businesses are able to create a competitive advantage by testing and measuring online marketing tactics, such as banner ad placement, email campaigns, and pay-per-click campaigns. Simply running an A/B testing is not enough; the marketer should have a solid understanding of statistical analysis to determine the correct sample size, confidence level, and confidence interval. Check out www.sempo.org or www.webanalyticsassociation.com for additional details on A/B testing methods.

SEO, Flash, and AJAX. How can they work together?

Effective design and SEO are both contributors to the success of an effective website. However two effective design means, Flash and AJAX, both conflict with SEO. Flash and AJAX are both in nature not friendly for SEO. Flash and AJAX cannot be read by search engine spiders, so websites purely based on Flash and AJAX will not do well in search engine results. However, a website that lacks an effective design will not engage your audience, and thus create a bigger chance of losing potential clients. So, how can you make a website that utilizes Flash and/or AJAX while possessing the ability to achieve high results in search engine traffic?

The most important thing would be to make your key content in plain text. Search engine spiders are very much like a text-based browser, they cannot read text embedded in flash or an image. Making sure your key content (which is the content that is relative to your website and search queries) in text format will allow search engine spiders to access your pages and index your content. Somewhere in your design should be text based links as well. They may not be the greatest design elements, however search engine spiders cannot read buttons that are images, Flash, or AJAX, so text links will allow spiders to explore your entire website. Limiting your use of AJAX would be advised as well, since content created by AJAX is created dynamically, thus not allowing spiders to index content created by AJAX. Overall, Flash and AJAX would be recommended for certain design elements while leaving key content in a text format, thus allowing great search engine results for your website.