Time. Get listed again, and again, and again in Google.

Google Google Google. While a majority of your traffic probably does come from Google it is not the only place that you should be focusing your marketing efforts on. Clients ask us all the time about ways to help drive traffic to your website, and help you with SEO at the same time. Not every company or individual can afford to spend thousands of dollars each month on advertising. So you need to find some useful cost-effective ways to promote.

I have compiled a running list and figured it was a good “tip sheet” to offer our readers.

Social Bookmarking
These can be great for getting links and direct traffic. Use Digg, Mixx, StumbleUpon, Sphinn or search for one with your industry.

Social Networking
Yep, they can help you more with viability and networking, and sometime can help with back links for SEO as well. Most times they are good for direct traffic.

Forum Participation
Know your industry? Go out and find some forums where you can participate in the discussion and become involved. Be genuine, and help build your authority by not going all-out salesman on the discussions.

Blogging
Start a blog. Talk about what you know. Respond to comments. Get out there and converse with others that are in your industry, or those who talk about the same topics or areas as you do. Comment, engage in conversation. If the blog has DoFollow on the comment posts for your name even better.

Link Generously
If you are blogging, commenting or participating in forums, bookmarking or engaging a group in a social network show value and link to useful sites, articles, posts and discussions. Give back what you take. Share.

Advertising
Even a small budget of $100 a month can bring you in some nice traffic. Target and engage those visitors.

Email Marketing
This can be an art within itself, however there are a lot of free services such as IContact or Constant Contact.

Directory Listings
There are a ton of niche directories out there. I recommend listing with Yahoo! for the $299 a year, Business.com and Best of the Web (BOTW) for small fees. DMOZ listings are great as well. These are highly visible and respected and a link from them helps to boost your link popularity for your site.

Yahoo! Groups
I’ve experienced some long-term success building communities through email discussion groups. Start your own and if you can commit the time become a moderator.

Press Releases
Your business always has news. It may not be the “breaking news” worthy of the NY Times front page, however can help to add content to your website, and when distributed online provide useful backlinks that help rankings.

Video
Go get a FlipVideo camera online or at Best Buy. They are so fast and easy to use and publish. Do a Video release each month, speak to your customers- show the real side of your business, products and services. Publish those to a YouTube or MySpace account, optimize and then pull in and place on your site.

Associations
Chamber of Commerce, TweetUps, MeetUps, associations and groups. They are all good for networking, new business and ideas.

Twitter
Micro blogging is all the rage right now. Start to use Twitter and see how it can become a part of your business for sales and promotions. Start slow and give value to your followers.

Widgets
Create one and release it. There are free widget services and applications out there to use. If not they can be low cost. MyBlogLog has a widget and I have found it to really drive some good traffic to one of my other sites.

Memes
I find it hard to participate in them most of the time, however if you go at them long-term they can provide some great traffic and links.

Blog Carnivals
I have not yet seen much traffic come from these but they are great beginning steps for newbies.

Craigslist
I have some customers that have gotten some great traffic from Craigslist. It’s just traffic, but traffic that converts. Be careful though not to spam and look like a free traffic whore.

Contests
Give away some service package. Give away a TV. Collect users information and re-market to them in the future.

Article Marketing
If you are an expert in your field and can write, create some articles, bet of the _______, top 10 mistakes, etc. Submit them to article sites online and make sure to place your information in the footer of the article.

Email Signatures

Soooo important. Never know how many times or who these get forwarded to.

PPC can be confusing at first, particularly with all the different services available and the different costs inherent within them. This confusion has deterred many businesses. By taking the time to work through the different services, though, many more companies have found that PPC can help them generate more leads, more sales and more profits.

The entire civilized world has seemingly heard of Google, making it one of the most popular search engines on the net. The sheer volume of people that use Google on a daily basis is reason enough for businesses to use their PPC service. This service, known as AdWords, allows users to choose keywords and the price they are willing to bid for them. A particular ad’s ranking is based upon its cost per click (CPC), a setting that the user determines, multiplied by its click through rate (CTR). The CTR is the percentage of how many times an ad was seen by a potential customer vs. how many times the customer actually clicked on the ad. Thus if 100 customers saw the ad, but only 45 of them clicked on it, the ad’s CTR would be 45%.

When using Adwords, businesses must constantly check on the performance of their keywords and their ads. If a business notices that its CTR is down, they will likely need to refurbish their site, choose new keywords and/or adjust their CPC. Each adjustment will have a different effect and individual businesses need to decide what types of changes help to put their site at the top of the list.

While Google may be one of the most popular search engines, it is not the only one. Yahoo! Search Marketing is a very popular engine and their PPC service is far less complicated than Google’s. Rather than waste any time ranking sites based on content, Yahoo! runs their search engine like an auction, with the top spots being awarded to the top bidders. With Yahoo! many companies make the mistake of thinking that the content in their website doesn’t need to be compelling or well done, because they already earned the top spot without it. On the contrary, while high rankings normally bring in traffic, turning that traffic into sales is normally based upon the quality of the site.

Another important search engine to utilize is Looksmart. Their PPC service runs on a basic $0.25 per click fee, making their service much cheaper than Yahoo! Search Marketing and much more simplified than Google’s. Looksmart’s service, unlike Yahoo! Search Marketing, does not rank sites based upon price, but rather on content. Thus any business that is looking to use the ease of Looksmart should have a site that is of high quality. However Looksmart’s system overall receives much less traffic than Yahoo! or Google.

All three of these services offer businesses a chance to promote their e-commerce sites. Companies should weigh the pros and cons of each service and decide which ones fit their needs.

About 80% of Internet users will count on the search engines to locate websites that have relevant information for them.  Webmasters and Internet marketers need to pick the right keywords to help raise their rankings and bring visitors into their site. This is what we do with our Search Engine Marketing services – we can specify the correct terms to target to bring relevant traffic to your website via paid or organic search.

Many people think that it is useful to look for branded keywords because brand names in keywords will help increase conversion rates.  The people who input brand names as keywords have a higher chance of purchasing a product than people who search using generic keywords.  Some research has shown that out of 100 search terms, 75 of them were brand names.

What does this mean to you?  Should you only focus on brand terms in keywords?  No…the right keyword techniques will use brand and non-brand terms.

What exactly does a brand term or non-brand term mean?  Brand keywords are when the name of the site, trademark, or specific product or service is used.  It doesn’t include product brand names the marketer has that are non-exclusive.  Non-brand keywords don’t have any references to the marketer, the site, proprietary brands, or its trademarks.

Why are non-brand terms important?  People use them to find the information they need.  When Internet users type in keywords, people use both brand terms and non-brand terms.  It is almost a 50-50 ration.  Conversion rates are high for people who use brand terms at the beginning and end of the search process.  The conversion was almost just as high for people who began searching with a non-brand term and ended with a brand term.

These numbers should tell you that using both of these terms will be important to the success of your business.  Make sure to market your products both generally and in brand terms, and you will receive better results from paid and organic search. As always, if you need help please don’t be afraid to contact TM online.

Why? Google’s huge data centers located all over the world which according to the study consumes huge amount of energy every time a user conducts a search in Google. The research has already been submitted for publication the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the author has set up a website called CO2stats.com. If you want to learn more about this organization do a Google search, and then pray that the world doesn’t end because you’ve contributed the last amount of Co2 that would lead its destruction.

Is Google the only search engine which contributes to the production of CO2? If Google produces 7g of CO2 every time a search is conducted, can you imagine the amount of CO2 that has already been produced by all of us since the day Google become such a huge phenomenon on the web? And can you also imagine how many more CO2 we are going to produce if we continue using Google search?

I’ll stop now with this interesting fact so that I don’t make you do any more random Google searches to purposely destroy the environment.

Now comes the fun part and the example of a common mistake during “busy” times, or the fault of an ill-managed SEM campaign by internal staff or exterior online digital agency. As you can see below the placement of Hammacher Schlemmer in the paid position #2 in Google for the keyword “double buffer shoe polisher.” This is a good position, and I probably would of recommended that they be placed here in the top 3 paid results with the following in mind:

• # of unique competitors in that market for the product
• if there were natural results for Hammacher Schlemmer for the shoe polisher above the fold
• cost associated, CTR and CPA (click thru; cost per acquisition) for the product vs. the cost for the customer

You’ll also notice how they have shopping feed listings just under paid search results and before the natural organic result. Hammacher Schlemmer is all over this page. Great. They look like a trusted leader and since I know the name, the sale should be pretty easy. Probably just based on price.

So I click on the top paid ad. (like a normal consumer)

With me so far?

Good. Now let’s take a look at where they land me in their website. Great! This is the right place and a simple rule of thumb in SEM101. However take a look near the bottom. (gulp)

Ugh. I cannot buy this item.Now let me play out the mind of the consumer in slow motion:

“Darnit! They don’t have anymore. I must call in, and it is 11:30 PM on a weekday. I am sure no one is there now. I guess I’ll just hit the back button and go to another listing in the search results. Maybe one of their competitors has this item and maybe it is cheaper…”

Now let me do this at real speed:

Click. (that was the back button)

See the point?

It only took a half second to lose a sale that cost Hammacher Schlemmer a few dollars to get. All because they didn’t manage their SEM campaign correctly. They (or their agency) forgot / never bothered / to turn off their paid campaign keywords or redirect that unique customer to another page with similar products, hopefully trying to keep them at the site and convert a customer from paid search.

This is an all too common mistake that we see retailers do all too often. SEM campaigns need to be managed daily, if not hourly for a large spend and high traffic site, epically in a time sensitive holiday season.

There should have been a message near the top of this product page announcing it was sold out, BUT they were taking back-orders by phone and there is a special FREE Gift for the trouble. Maybe a 10% off coupon for your next purchase with Hammacher Schlemmer online?

The ideas are endless and could be acted upon quickly.

Like this mistake that also needs to be corrected so they don’t lose more sales:

This is the error I received when I tried to communicate with Hammacher Schlemmer on the following page http://www.hammacher.com/contact_us/main.asp

In closing, the moral of the story is apparent: take your time and manage your SEM campaigns with diligence or face losing customers to your competitors at a price. Take some extra time to have your internal warehouse and inventory staff communicate with your marketing staff or agency on a regular basis. Every day if not hourly during the holiday season. If not, you’ll face the possibility to present to many customers what you present to me: a lost sale that cost you $ to lose. And then you may face seeing your position added to this list below.

But just how did he do it?

Here are five uses of technology that helped him win.

1) Facebook – Obama made a splash initially by appealing to young voters, who were typically apathetic good-for-nothings. Unlike his rivals, Obama was ‘down wid da kidz’ from the beginning, becoming one of the most popular celebrities on Facebook, with over 2.5m supporters. This provides Obama with a direct line to them – his campaign had been sending out daily messages to everyone’s Facebook to get the message out and motivate supporters.

2) Twitter/UStream - Okay, so this may not have been as pivotal as Facebook, but @barackobama’s 120,000-odd followers got regular updates on where he was and were regularly provided with links to watch rallies being streamed live over the internet.

3) YouTube - Obama’s base could be described as the “YouTube generation”, and thanks to the magic of modern technology, all of the major events from the campaign can be found on YouTube (apart from Daily Show and Colbert Report appearances, grumble, grumble). Obama’s big speech on race has been viewed over 5 million times on the site, which is more than the combined cable news audience who watched it. Similarly, YouTube has become a campaigning tool for more grass roots support, with one music video putting an Obama speech to music has had over 11 million views. And these are just two small examples.

4) Joe Biden text – (Brilliant in my opinion) Rather than announce his running mate in the traditional way, Obama tried to eschew the old media route and instead urged people to sign up for a text alert to be the “first to know” who Obama has picked. Millions of people signed up to receive this. Admittedly, when Obama finally picked Biden it was leaked to the press early resulting in the need to bulk-text millions of Americans in the early hours of the morning, but I doubt the Obama campaign were complaining about all of those phone numbers of voters they’d harvested.

5) Not being technologically inept - Poor old John McCain is rubbish at using computers and technology, whereas Obama was pictured many times tapping away on his Blackberry – a sure sign that a candidate is modern and has his finger on the pulse. Did Americans really want a man with his finger on the nuclear button if he didn’t really know how to work the machine?

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Faced with the prospect of a lawsuit by federal antitrust authorities, Google decided to pull the plug on its proposed search ad deal with Yahoo. “After four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it’s clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement,” Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, wrote on the company’s blog Wednesday. “Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners.”

The deal called for Google to power some paid search ads for Yahoo. The companies estimated that the arrangement, forged to fend off Microsoft’s takeover bid for Yahoo, would have increased Yahoo’s revenue by around $800 million in the first year. When they announced the deal in June, they said they would delay it for four months, to give the federal authorities time to investigate.

Wednesday, after the companies announced the deal collapsed, the Department of Justice said it would have sued to block the arrangement. “Google and Yahoo would have become collaborators rather than competitors for a significant portion of their search advertising businesses, materially reducing important competitive rivalry between the two companies.”

After the deal unraveled, Yahoo said it was “disappointed” that Google “elected to withdraw from the agreement rather than defend it in court.”

Ref: MediaPost

Spending your marketing dollars in order to relay your message to the general population will work. However, why not make the most of your money and increase your odds of sales by targeting a specific audience? For instance, if you’re selling landscaping tools, it’s pretty useless to pay to have your ad ran in a women’s lingerie catalog- they aren’t the market that you’re trying to target.

By specifically targeting a certain group of people, you improve chances of successful advertisement. Direct your marketing and you will surely be making the right sort of investment in your advertisement.
When you know who you want to sell to and where they are, you can figure out the best way to reach them. Knowledge about your market’s location, income and needs will help you decide what method of advertisement you should use.

In order to figure out the information you need to best sell your product or service, you’re going to need to do some research. Data such as average sales of your type of product is imperative information of which to be aware. Research is of the utmost importance when it comes to those who are just starting a business. Without vital information consisting of simple facts and figures, you are sure to run into loads of disappointment. Of course you will always have obstacles, but your efforts should include trying to minimize mistakes.

A “target market” is the group or kind of people who are most apt to purchase your product or service. Ignore your urges to advertise to the general public in hopes of increasing market spread. Rather, you should define your market as specifically as possible.

Step 1: Raw Facts and Figures
•    What is the age range of your target market? – This is extremely important when deciding what type of message to convey to your prospects. The “voice” you choose to create depends heavily on the age group of your market.
•    Girl or Boy – Are your target customers male or female? If you believe its split down the middle, find some other way to narrow it down.
•    Location Location Location – Where do your prospects reside? Where do they most likely shop? Try to narrow it down to specific cities or zip codes.
•    What sort of jobs do they have? – Do they make a lot of money or are they more of your average joes? Corporate lifestyle or mostly homemakers? The type of job they have helps you narrow down who can afford your product as well as when they would be most likely to purchase it.

Step 2: Narrow it Down
You’ll now want to go even further. Look into the more specific details of your prospects lifestyles in order to really narrow it down.
•    Do they spend more time at home or at work?
•    Do they have children or take care of family?
•    Are they available weekends?
•    How often do they need your type of product or service?

Step 3: Psychology 101
You’re going to really need to get into the minds of your target market. Think about questions that might affect they way they think or react, such as…
•    Who most influences them? Family, neighbors, spouses? How can you target them indirectly?
•    Why do they make purchases? Why would they buy your product? Specify the benefits of your product and how it can help them.
•    What type of message most appeals to their personality? Advertising a rock band to a group of teenagers needs an entirely different feel than an advertisement for a mattress company.

Step 4: Who’s your favorite?
Study your favorite client to get information in a case study manner. Who are they, where do they live, and what are their specific demographics, such as age, gender, marital status, etc. These things will help you identify people like them that will respond positively to your marketing.

Step 5: What’s their value?
Determine the type of clients that will help maximize your profits.
•    Who will make the largest purchases or the most frequently?
•    What type of clients will return to you?
•    How likely are they to refer other clients to you?

Specifying the type of people that will most likely buy your product or service is imperative if you want to truly utilize the money you spend on advertisement. Not only will you be able to better determine the hows, wheres, and whens of advertisement, but you will also be apt to receive the most success among your target market.

It is obvious to just about anyone that the best type of advertising is word of mouth.  Currently, marketers and agencies like us, are trying to utilize word of mouth marketing so it can work to a business’ advantage much better than it did in the past.  You may consider your work as business to business, or business to consumer marketing.  With word of mouth marketing, it is considered consumer to consumer.  These marketing messages are spread from one consumer to another.  The world of advertising is going to get more congested than ever and people will see it everywhere they turn, but people will still take the word of a family member, friend, colleague, or complete stranger.

You can split word of mouth into two parts.  The first part deals with planting and developing buzz about the product or service.  The other part deals with the use of research methods to comprehend consumer discussions, or to listen to them.  Many discussions will not happen on the Internet, but the discussions that do happen online can be tracked.

Many marketers have made an organized effort to listen to consumers, like having a focus group.  These efforts could be a bit too constrained because the marketer is controlling everything, and people may be influenced by that.  The way of receiving this information is biased toward the marketer and the business they represent.

Market research is concentrated on asking question to get some sort of knowledge.  You will be generating the data that you analyze; it isn’t naturally received.  Instead of a professional asking questions to people, it would be more beneficial to a business to study the behavior of their consumers in the real world.

Word of mouth marketing isn’t only about listening; it is also about monitoring your consumers and feeling things out.  It means observing consumers without interfering and trying to find some order in the disorder of the information that is produced by consumers.

1)    Research keywords
Luckily, Google provides a free Keyword Tool that lets you find out which keywords are at the top of competition. A click’s value is based on the competitiveness of the keyword, so choose wisely.  Be creative; you might even find that less competitive words can be turned around for your use in targeting a specific consumer group.

2)    Organize your ad groups
Make an effort to keep your ad groups organized. Separate them by keyword and create functional, related groups in which to put them. Use these groups to create targeted ads. By creating ads with grouped key words, you’ll end up with a higher search engine ranking based on quality. This way your words will show up bolded in results, providing the elevated rate that all PPC marketers are searching for.

3)    Go ahead- Be Boastful
This is no time for modestly, so let it all out. Clearly identify reasons why consumers should choose you over the competition.  What makes you better? It’s as good a time as any to brag about your ads and about what makes your words more profitable than the next guy’s. Reel them in by describing your offer with conviction.

4)    Optimize the Destinations
DO NOT use your clicks to send users to your homepage. In the market of internet advertising, online consumers are among the worst of impatient, judgmental clients. Avoid wasting time and money and just send them to optimized landing pages.

5)    Landing on Success
Make sure that your landing pages are not only relevant and optimized, but that they are also the answer to your consumers click. It is important to present landing pages as the right place, just what the consumer was searching for. Take the time to create multiple landing pages of relevant information for specific ad groups and key words. Lacking in this aspect of PPC will surely lead to disaster.

6)    Keep your Ads Honest!
Avoid making a silly mistake. A fundamental direction- do not lie in your ads. Be sure to keep any promises you make, otherwise you’ll be sure to lose business. A dishonest tactic will only damage your reputation. Instead, use genuine advertising to help boost sales. Instead of wasting time with lies, use that time to make you stand apart from your competition.

7)    Negative Keywords have a Positive Effect
Using Google’s new Negative Keyword Tool, you can find negative keywords for your ads. What on earth are these you ask? Well negative keywords are words for which you do not want your ads to display. Using negative keywords will surely open another door of business for your landing pages. Sum it all up for increased conversion rates.

8)    Give it a Run Through
Test your ads! This simple action helps you figure out what you need to do to increase the rate of your ads. Use A/B split tests to figure out what little detail will work to optimize your click-through rates.

9)    Chill out on CTRs
High click through rates are not the deciding factor in maintaining your PPC business. You must focus on this business as a whole in order to ensure longevity and continuous success. So follow the above steps and create good landing pages to keep your clicks relevant. Work on putting in the effort to maintain a good business and you will be sure to receive a profitable return.

10)     Don’t Limit Yourself
The best competitor is the he or she who considers every possibility. So don’t limit yourself to the big dogs (Google). Of course you have to use the obvious advertising venues, but don’t ignore the other outlets which could prove to be quite profitable.

If you ever feel overwhelmed and need some help don’t be afraid to reach out and ask. TM has Google & Yahoo! certified search engine marketing experts on staff. There are SEM packages available to fit any budget and consulting packages for you and your team. Contact TM online.