Advertising works. If you have a good offer and spend money on good advertising, you will earn revenue from your advertising efforts. Search engine or pay per click (PPC) advertising is a great example of revenue-generating advertising. Good businesses spending money on well-run PPC advertising should get a decent return on their ad dollars.

But not all advertising works – including PPC advertising. As soon as you start a PPC campaign, rest assured some of those Google dollars are going right down the drain. Whether or not you know it – you’re bidding on terms that will never turn into a sale. Famous 18^th century businessman John Wanamaker once said “I know that half of my advertising money is wasted… I just don’t know which half.”  This is especially true with pay per click advertising.

Analytics Tells You Which Visitors Are Likely To Buy

The good news is you can now know which half of your PPC ad dollars are being wasted. By measuring the effects of your PPC traffic through web analytics, you can see which PPC visitors like your website and which ones don’t. Better yet, you can see which visitors do something significant on your website – like contact you,  download an ebook, or make a purchase – called a conversion in PPC lingo. And knowing that information, you can spend more money on the types of visitors who like your website and will take an action, and stop spending money on visitors who don’t.

So how do you determine which visitors are welcome on your site and which ones should stay home? Before going there, it would be good to review how things work in the offline world…

Consider a dress shop and its shoppers. Some dress shoppers are more likely to buy than others. A good salesperson knows the difference. When the salesperson asks a shopper if they need any help, one visitor may reply by asking for different dress sizes. That visitor is more likely to buy than the visitor who responds to the salesperson’s inquiry with “I’m just looking.” Just like a salesperson can determine which shoppers are more likely to buy before a purchase, good web analytics can do the same thing for your website – and its PPC visitors.

How Web Analytics Works With Your PPC

What is web analytics? Simply put, web analytics measures website usage and relates it to the effectiveness of your PPC ads. Web analytics has several standard metrics. These measurements suggest different levels of web visitor interest in your site, and tie that interest to the keywords used to find your site.

PPC advertising sends traffic to your website initiated by search engine keywords. Internet searchers type in words into a search engine, see a list of results, then click on the ad which sends them to your website. Some of those PPC visitors are interested in what they see on your site – others are not.

Good web analytics will tell you, just like the salesperson, which PPC visitors are interested in your site and which ones are “just looking” and unlikely to take any action (or may have gotten there by mistake). Web analytics identifies and sorts these visitors in terms of the keywords they used to get to your site. Some PPC keywords will have high engagement with the website: low bounce rate, high average time on site, and more actions taken on your site. Other PPC keywords will have lower engagement with your website. The first visitors/PPC keywords are more valuable, while the other visitors/PPC keywords are less valuable.

How to Improve PPC with Analytics

The goal is to minimize traffic from less valuable PPC keywords and maximize traffic from more valuable PPC keywords. If you eliminate the bad keywords, then you have eliminated waste in your PPC advertising. The John Wanamaker problem of wasted advertising will be solved – at least for your PPC account.

Here’s how it works in real-life PPC…

Let’s say you own a website selling paint in Des Moines, Iowa. One visitor comes to your site from a PPC ad after typing into Google “learn to paint in Des Moines”. Another visitor clicks on an ad after typing “buy paint in Des Moines”. The 2^nd PPC visitor is much more likely to buy.  Like the dress salesman in the above example, you want to pay closer attention to the more promising visitor — but how do you do that?

If you review the web analytics activity for your site, you’ll see more positive activity for the second PPC keyword than for the first PPC keyword. The 2^nd visitor would have a lower bounce rate, more pageviews, and probably more sales compared to the 1st visitor. This tells you that “learn to paint in Des Moines” is probably causing you to waste money, while “buy paint in Des Moines” is a profitable keyword term for you.  Your best next step is to prune the unprofitable keyword terms from your PPC campaign and continue to experiment with other promising search terms till you find the ones that send the most qualified visitors your way.  You can stop wasting money and spend it only where it makes a proven difference.

Web analytics opens up a completely new layer of visibility on your internet marketing campaigns. Instead of living at the mercy of PPC-only metrics, you can now see which PPC keywords lead to buying-like activity on your website and which ones don’t. That way you stop wasting your PPC budget on worthless traffic – and start maximizing your PPC budget where it counts. John Wanamaker would be proud.

But, while it’s tough to achieve widespread fame and popularity in the blogging world, it’s very possible to build a following, establish your reputation, improve your search rankings, and draw qualified traffic and leads to your site.  The trick is to focus.  Narrow your goals.  Start small and build from there.

Focus Your Topics

Choose a handful of highly relevant keywords that crystallize the topics you want to promote and be found for.  Do some keyword research to make sure those terms are not too competitive, and to find wording that searchers are actually looking for.  Build your content around those terms.

Be Unique

Don’t state the obvious or repeat what’s already been said elsewhere.  Find your own voice, draw your own conclusions, look for unique insights.  They don’t need to be grand or profound – just a different twist on something of interest in your market (here’s a fun blog post on how to document your epiphanies, from Marnie Pehrson).

Identify A Narrow Audience

Blogging strategy: Big fish, small pond

When you first launch your blog, tell everyone you know and make as big a splash as possible – you never know who might come.  But once you’ve gone public, define the target audience where you want to make your biggest impact, and tailor your promotional efforts to them.  Aim first to be a big fish in a small pond; make good impressions and let the word spread.

Establish Yourself

Search Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to find out who is talking about your topics.  Talk with them, share relevant links (including, but not exclusively, your own blog posts), host discussions, answer questions, offer helpful hints.  Give before you get. Find a Bookmarking site or an online forum that services your target audience, and make yourself known there by offering valuable comments.  (My favorite is a wonderful small business site called BizSugar).  Read and comment on other blogs in your field. This helps you get known by other bloggers, who, if your posts are good, will link back to you. Contribute guest blog posts on related blogs and link back to yours.  Or, publish interviews with other bloggers and they may return the favor.  Add some video into your blogging mix, as it will appeal to people who are tired of reading.

Ask Your Followers to Spread the Word

If your content is good and interesting and unique, people will follow it.  If you want to build your followers, ask people to subscribe, to share your posts, to retweet — and make it easy for them to do it.

Be Patient

Finally, don’t set unrealistic expectations for yourself.  Learn as you go, redirect as needed, and be patient as your following takes its natural path.  It may take you a while, so don’t get on the blogging train unless you intend to hang in there for the long haul.

• 65 million business professionals are connected on LinkedIn
• LinkedIn claims to be the world’s largest audience of influential professionals
• Average household income of LinkedIn members: $109,000
• 45% are actual business decision makers

Lots of people have joined LinkedIn for business networking purposes and to get their resume online for public consumption.   Many LinkedIn users, after posting their profile and linking to some college classmates and former colleagues, will move on and rarely look back.  But there’s much more to LinkedIn than resume sharing and popularity contests.  Like other forms of Social Media marketing, if you approach LinkedIn with a deliberate set of business goals, you can make it deliver real bottom line results.  If you are looking for a job and using LinkedIn to spread your resume, you’ll market yourself with that goal in mind.  But if you are looking to build leads and establish relationships that could lead to sales, these tips are meant for you.

Tip 1:  Position Your Profile Intentionally

Headline. Remember that your prospects will spend no more than about 10 seconds deciding whether to click through to your profile, and your headline is your make-or-break chance to capture their interest – so make it count!  Don’t just list your job title or position, but instead use your headline to say who you are, what sort of person or company you can help, and what you will help them to do.  Think about the person you want to find you, then speak to them and describe what you can do for them.

Summary. Once you’ve caught their attention enough for them to visit your profile, use the Summary section to elaborate.  Your Summary should build on your headline and describe what you’re passionate about, what your business does, what problems you can solve, and why you’re qualified to solve them.  Use the Specialties section of your Summary to give a succinct list of the skills and abilities that set you apart.

Experience & Recommendations. If you are looking for sales leads, the rest of your profile should reflect how you talk to your best sales prospects.  Speak in terms they can relate to.  List your experience – current and past – in words designed to highlight your qualifications – not for past jobs, but for the service you currently offer.  Ask for recommendations from people who can attest to the skills or expertise you offer (the more the better!).  The best way to attract recommendations?  Give them generously to others.

Additional Information. Do you have a website?  A blog?  A Twitter account?  If they position you well and reflect your desired image, list them.  Given them a name more interesting than “my website” or “my blog” (click “Other” when prompted) to entice your visitors to click.  If you’ve received an honor or award or hold membership in groups that enhance your desired image, include them.  Be cautious about adding “interests”, and remember you’re addressing a potential client, not a hiring manager.  That said, listing one or two interests can give it a more personal touch, if that’s what you’re after.

Tip 2:  Be Smart About Keywords

LinkedIn is a search engine, just like Google, and people use it to find contacts with particular expertise.  Optimizing your LinkedIn profile follows the same general principles as SEO.  Think carefully about how you want to position yourself, and choose 2-3 keywords you want to be “found” with.  Make sure those keywords are prominently used in these places:

• Your profile headline
• Your current job description
• At least one past job description
• Your summary
• Your specialty

Tip 3:  Try the Advanced Applications

To further enrich your presence, click “More” on the LinkedIn menu and go to the Application Directory.   You’ll find a list of options and should try one or two to spice up your page and give prospects who want to look further a more rounded sense of who you are.  Have a Twitter account?  If you manage your Twitter interactions professionally, then give LinkedIn visitors a peek at what you’re Tweeting.  Author a blog?  Pull the feed into your LinkedIn profile so visitors don’t have to leave to read it.  Have a SlideShare or Google Presentation appropriate for client prospects?  This is the place to show it.  Are you an author?  Include your book in the “Amazon Reading List” app and drive people directly to where they can buy it.  Do you hold events for prospecting?  List your event here, manage the RSVPs and lead qualification activities through this application – and let your LinkedIn connections spread the word virally.  Take a few moments to explore the other apps here and decide whether they belong in your “lead generation” cycle.  There’s huge value for your lead generation activities here.

Tip 4:  Create a Group in Your Niche

Hosting a LinkedIn Group is a terrific way to build leads.  Make sure you spend time in other Groups in your niche first, so you’re not flying blind and you first get a feel for Group etiquette.  When you set up your own Group, LinkedIn allows you to create a Welcome message, which gets emailed to each new member when they join.  Use this to let newcomers know the purpose of your Group and what they can expect – but also to build your brand, send traffic to your website, add a call-to-action, etc.  The email will link to your Group Profile page, where you can include a description, website link, and list of any subgroups. Once established, you can send announcements to your LinkedIn group in email (max of once a week).  Use this feature judiciously, and make sure you’re sending something of value (free events, webinars, hosted discussions, etc); like most social media, a hard-sell approach is generally a turnoff.  For a great example of using LinkedIn Groups to drive new business, see the Sports Industry Network group created by Lewis Howes.

Try these tips and see if they help build your pipeline of client leads!

First, some good news about Google Reviews.  If you have claimed your listing and have an owner-verified Google Place Page, you now have the ability to respond publicly to reviews your visitors have posted.  It’s a terrific opportunity to add your perspective when required or to soften the blow of a negative review.  Approach this new opportunity carefully, though, and take a deep breath before responding to negative reviews.  You might want to read this post by Mike Blumenthal before you do: Responding to Negative Reviews: Your Prospects are Your Real Audience (the title alone is great advice!).  Note that this does not extend to reviews that Google pulls from other sources, only the ones entered directly on your Place Page.  This move shows good progress by Google on the Local Search front and suggests that they are putting more attention into Place Pages (some even think they intend to evolve this into a Social platform…we’ll see).

Second, Google has been incrementally improving the analytics in the Place Pages Dashboard, so you can see how many people are visiting your Place Page, what keywords bring them there, what actions they take, etc.  And rather than having to remind yourself to view these analytics, Google has now started emailing to Place Page owners a Monthly Performance Update email, so you can’t miss the data on how you’re doing.

These small but frequent incremental improvements are good news indeed for Small Business Owners.  If your business has a local customer base, you don’t want to miss this increasingly productive opportunity to establish your Google Place Page presence.

With the skyrocketing popularity of social media, consumers of all types are becoming more and more comfortable consuming and sharing information, opinions, and ideas openly across the Web.  It can be fun and engaging to jump right in – watch videos on YouTube, share pictures and stories on Facebook, voice your opinions on Twitter – and see what the commotion is all about.  There’s nothing wrong with diving in – in fact, it’ll give you a good feel for what people are saying about your business or industry, what topics are popular, what behavior is acceptable, and who are the opinion leaders in the social media realm. But after your initial immersion, you’ll likely soon be asking how you can gain business value from these new tools.  Try this 6-step approach.

1:  Know Your Audience.

The basic principle behind social media is that you’ll get value by giving value.  To be sure, there’s plenty of low-value content floating around, but the content that sticks, that gets shared and paid attention to, is content that offers real value.  Educational value.  Entertainment value.  Financial value.  Food-for-thought value.  So, step one for anyone planning social media involvement should be to understand what your audience finds valuable.  You may have a clear understanding of that already.  Or you may need to do some research.  Try search.twitter.com and see who’s talking about your company or industry – and what topics are popular.  Read your competitors’ blogs and see what topics draw the most comments and re-tweets.  Or survey your customers directly and ask them what they value.

2:  Define Your Goals.

Once you have a read on what your customers value, determine your own goals.  Are you looking to attract new customers through your social media efforts?  Do you want to build loyalty and repeat business with existing customers?  Do you want to address customer concerns and support issues?  The obvious answer here is YES to all three; after all, who wouldn’t want those things?  But – not so fast.  Force yourself to be more specific and make sure your goals are measurable.  If you pick just one as your primary goal, it will help you be more deliberate in your actions and allow you to better measure your success.  If you have multiple goals, be specific about what you want.  For example:

• Looking to attract new customers?   What are the exact challenges, frustrations & pain points you’ll help them address or problems you’ll help them solve?
• Looking to build customer loyalty?   What is the knowledge & expertise you want to demonstrate?
• Looking to address concerns and issues?   What are the specific issues you need to address?

3:  Build Your Topics List.

Once you’ve prioritized your goals, you can build a plan to achieve them.  Social media marketing is not radically different from what you’ve always done with customers and business associates – it’s just more frequent, more targeted, and has a more grass-roots culture than traditional forms of marketing.  It’s also more natural and more fun, which is why so many consumers prefer it.  Think of it as talking WITH your customers, not talking AT them.   Here’s where the “know your audience” research is critical.  What are their issues, challenges, needs, questions?  Instead of jumping right to how your product or service can help them, think about what information will help them.  Then list out some topics that address the information on your list.  Your goal is to establish your expertise as the first step in creating customer confidence and trust.  If you’re a travel agency, for example, your customers’ challenges & questions might include things like:

• Which is the best cruise option for seniors traveling solo?
• How can I plan an itinerary that includes great walking destinations?
• How should I pack to minimize checked-baggage fees?
• What are some good options for amusing my toddler on a long flight?
• Is it worth planning my own itinerary vs taking the travel package?
• What are the best vegetarian restaurants in the cities I’m travelling to?
• …you get the idea

4:  Map Out a Content Plan/Editorial Calendar

You’ll quickly see, from your list of customer questions, how you can help them.  Not just by selling them your product or service – but by addressing their information needs.  Let your list of customer challenges & questions be the starting point for your content and editorial calendar.  Draw on your own expertise, network of contacts, company knowledge base, industry trends, and other sources to develop content ideas that customers will value.  If you can provide answers, critical perspectives, “how to” advice, successful examples, and other helpful topics, you’re on your way to establishing your online expertise — and building a foundation of online trust.  Once you have a selection of topics, assign them to a calendar.  Plan around key events on your corporate or business calendar.  Assign topics to your seasonal cycles.  Determine a publication frequency that you can meet.   You can start with general timeframes, and firm them up as the dates get closer.  You should have 10-12 topics “in the hopper” at any point in time.  Ideally, you’ll begin to think like a real editor and begin to keep a strict editorial calendar as you get more comfortable with the concept.

5:  Pick the Appropriate Social Media Channels

Do  some customer research to determine which social media channels your customers use.  Your choice of social media (don’t plan to do them all – at least not initially) will depend on where your customers are and what type of content you plan to share.   Facebook is a good platform if you’re looking to reach consumers.  LinkedIn is good if you want to reach professionals or host serious business discussions.  Consider starting a blog if you have a wealth of information and your customers need ongoing education or advice.  Twitter is good for sharing links to other blogs and websites.  YouTube is great if you’re looking to demonstrate something visually.   Once you’ve chosen your channels, then include a column in your Editorial Calendar to designate which topic you’ll deliver by which channel.  Where possible, syndicate your content between channels.  For more information on how to map your content to the right Social Media channels, ask us about our Social Media Starter Kit.

6:  Measure Your Success

Web analytics are an important element of any Internet Marketing effort.   Like any marketing campaign, how you measure your success will depend on what goals you’ve set for yourself.   But there are plenty of measurement tools available.   Looking to increase traffic to your website? (there’s a measurement tool for that)  Looking to increase mentions & exposure of your business in social media? (there’s a tool for measuring that too)  Looking to decrease customer complaints or negative reviews (yep, we can measure that too).  The important thing is to make sure you have a baseline to measure from, and to track your progress over time.

Here are some additional sources, if you’re new to the idea of Content Marketing and want to read more:

Get Content, Get Customers — book by Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett

Content Marketing with a Side of Social - blog post by TopRank marketing blog

Another new offering from Google in the local business category is Google Tags, which are yellow markers displayed on a company’s Local/Google Maps listing to announce advertised specials — coupons, special offers, and other advertiser-supplied content.  Unlike Google’s Adwords pay-per-click advertising, Google Tags advertising is available for a flat monthly fee of $25.  Google is running a promotion this week (through Friday, July 23) for a 30-day free trial of Tags for new customers.

Don’t neglect this important element of your Internet Marketing activities…Google Local Search for small businesses is becoming an increasingly important way for your customers to find you!

See the short video below for a quick training and overview of the 7-pack and what you can do to get listed.   If you’re looking for more in-depth training and information, check out the link below the video.

For more information and to see what the local search “experts” say, see this June 7, 2010 report on Local Search Ranking Factors, from David Mihm.

Image Courtesy: Flickr/Matt Hamm

If you’re still wondering whether and how you should join the Social Media scene, you might relate to some of these concerns and hesitations we’ve heard from small businesses — and how to get beyond them.

Isn’t social media just a fad that I can ignore? This is a comment we heard a lot as recently as 6 months ago, but don’t hear much anymore.  Social media has so taken the business & marketing community by storm that not many people still think they can ignore it.  And yet, many small business owners, busy with their own concerns and in some cases struggling to get through recessionary times, are still hoping the social media buzz will die down and eventually go away.  Not likely.  Social media has evolved into a preferred channel of social and business interaction and has levelled the playing field, giving small businesses the opportunity to compete directly for customers and mind share.  It’s a terrific way to gain insight into what your “community” — of customers/clients, partners, patients, or associates — is thinking.  And it’s an excellent way to listen, understand, respond to and engage with that community.

I simply don’t have the time. No kidding.  Who does?  And I don’t mean this sarcastically.  This is probably the single biggest — and very warranted – concern most people have about jumping into social media.  No question that it takes a serious time commitment.  I just attended a webinar panel where Ramon DeLeon, owner of a Chicago Domino’s Pizza who has taken Social Media engagement to enviable heights, says he spends 6-7 hours a day on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc., on top of running his pizza shop.  More common estimates from people active in multiple Social Media channels run from 5-10 hours a week.   So, there’s no question that engagement with your customers takes time.   But I’ll say two important things to put that in perspective.  First, like anything that’s important to your business, when it impacts your success, you just find a way to make time.   And second, it’s fun.  If you manage your time efficiently, social media can give you access to customers and partners on a personal and meaningful level — an invaluable way to win their loyalty and trust.

Nothing important gets talked about; it’s just a lot of drivel. This used to be true.  In the early days of social media, when most people were just getting their feet wet and trying out the new tools, there was a lot of drivel in the system.  That’s still true, of course; but today there are thousands of people using social media for substantive discussions about business, politics, healthcare, research, and any number of other topics that involve people sharing ideas, giving opinions, passing on news, and holding conversations.   It’s true that social media communication is typically informal in style, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s drivel.  Anyone serious about using social media should make a point of weeding out the unimportant by pruning their contacts on a regular basis so as not to waste time with people unless you find their input valuable.

I use social media in my personal life, but I don’t want to mix it with my business life. The same things that attract people to social media in the personal realm are true in the business realm as well — sharing good ideas, learning, making connections.   It’s entirely feasible to maintain multiple personas in Social Media — one for personal connections and one (or more) for business — but many people choose to blend the two and find it works for them.  There are no rules about this, and everyone should do what works comfortably for them.

I don’t have anything important enough to say. Sure you do!  If you take the focus off yourself/your business and think instead about what your audience wants to hear, you’ll find plenty to say.  Do you have customers?  What are their challenges and how can you help them overcome those challenges?  What are other people in your industry saying, and what’s your reaction or opinion?  What changes are happening in your business and how can you help your audience prepare for those changes?   What new prospects or markets are you looking to enter and how can

There’s so much noise and so many choices, I don’t know how to get started. Don’t rush in.  Spend some time listening to what others are saying.  What topics are people following in your niche, and why are they of interest?  Who are the thought leaders in your industry and how are they engaging with social media?  Get clear on your goals and develop a plan that will help you reach them.  Create an editorial calendar with a deliberate roadmap of content your audience will find valuable.  Contact us about our Social Media Starter Kit.

Search marketing changes things.  In the Internet Marketing world, search advertising (PPC) is the latest form of paid brand-building, while SEO and Social Media are the newest strategies for boosting your  credibility online.  Traditional advertising and PR still exist, of course, but there are good reasons why companies are increasingly shifting their marketing budgets away from these channels into search-based Internet marketing.  The most obvious reasons are:

• the growing number of hours that people now spend online
• the fact that businesses can target audiences more effectively and less intrusively, since PPC ads and organic search listings display only when they’re relevant to what someone is actively searching for
• the ability to measure results and improve the return on your marketing investment

But there’s another, often overlooked reason why Internet search marketing trumps traditional advertising and PR – the crossover effect.   Pay per click advertising, if done well, can provide exacting metrics that tell you the comparative effectiveness of:

• specific keywords
• ad copy
• landing page content
• geographic regions

Which search phrases are sending the most traffic to your site?  What words or page elements cause visitors to spend more time on a website page?  What words and ad copy produce the highest sales conversions?  Drive the most revenue?  In other words, which variations of your ads can produce the biggest return on your marketing investment?

Once you understand these gems – the actual words, copy, and regions that drive leads and revenues for your business – you can make liberal use of them in your SEO efforts and your offline marketing activites.   Here are some ideas:

• Use the tested keywords to optimize the pages of your website, putting them into your page title, headings, first sentence and sprinkled throughout the copy (make it natural, not “stuffed”).  This is the first step of SEO, which will help your website to rank better in Google and other search engines.  Next, use these words in any content  or links you send out to other sites, linking them back to your site.  This “link building” will further help your web pages to rank for the target keywords, and will help qualified searchers to find your site.  
• Use the tested words whenever you talk about your company, online or offline.  After all, these are the words your customers are thinking.  Use those keyword phrases in your press releases, blog posts, email marketing campaigns, and social media activities. 
• Put extra sales & marketing effort into the geographies that send the best traffic to your site; that’s where your strongest leads are coming from.  Sponsor events there, offer special incentives on a regional basis, do a regional direct-mail campaign.
• Note the ad copy and landing-page offers that get the greatest response.  Use these as the basis for new marketing offers – both online and offline.

As you introduce new products or services, launch new marketing campaigns, or announce company news, think of PPC advertising and metrics as your testing and proving grounds.  There’s no better way to get measurable, actionable, real-time customer feedback and data.

Source: Based on the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.