What do you want your online New Jersey marketing campaign to accomplish for you? Are there any reasons why you would not want your pages to be found for your targeted keyword phrases on page 1?
Here are 3 reasons as to why that may be the case.
Is there intent for actual commerce?
Let's say you are the first result.
You should be asking yourself, what is the intent of this keyword phrase? Do the words contained in the keyword phrase give any indication of someone getting ready to spend money on a product/service that you offer?
For example, consider three keyword phrases we would use: Britain O'Connor, co-op advertising, and automotive marketing ideas. The latter 2 phrases give an indication of someone who is getting ready to spend money. The first phrase does not.
If you are targeting a keyword phrase that has questionable intention, there really shouldn't be any reason to be found on page 1. It would be better to target more appropriate phrases instead.
If there's no intent for actual commerce then that keyword phrase isn't helping your online New Jersey marketing efforts.
Traffic Really Matters
If you can have a first page result in position 4, or a second page result in position 12, which would you choose? Is this an obvious choice?
What if the first page choice has 3,300 monthly search queries for its keyword, but the second page choice has 22,200 monthly search queries for its keyword.
Would you still believe that the best choice in this example is the first page result?
According to numbers from Aaron Wall's site, approximately 6% of search users will click on the number 4 result in Google. That's 198 visitors in a month.
And over 1% will click on the number 12 search result. That's 222 visitors per month.
The second choice is now the obvious choice. The higher traffic volume will result in a higher percentage of online conversions.
Smart Searchers Bring Value
The people that click the first result in the SERPs are more often that not less serious than people who go through the first few results or who continue searching onto the second page.
There is something to be said about avoiding people who almost randomly click the first result and who may have impulse control issues.
These may not be the best potential clients for your products/services. For an automotive ad agency, retail advertising agency, or public relations agency like us, we like our clients to be a bit more informed so we can be on the same page when it comes to performance. The searchers who don't just click on the first result but read through a few are usually the more informed people.
A second page result could bring you more serious potential customers, people who are more likely to actually read your website content, understand your products/services better, and be more likely to become a traffic conversion.
According to a new study, mobile marketing budgets are going to increase dramatically over the next year. 31% of New Jersey marketing companies anticipate a budget between $100,000 and $250,000 on mobile marketing in 2010, compared to only 22% of New Jersey marketing ccompanies a year ago.
About 13% of New Jersey's best ad agencies plan to spend from $250,000 to $500,000, up from 4% of New Jersey's ad agencies in 2009. More than 15% will have a budget of more than $1 million for mobile marketing campaigns, compared to only 11% a year earlier. 23% are budgeting less than $100,000 and 10% don't even know how much they are going to spend on mobile marketing.
The study also showed that 60% of full service ad agencies that aren't doing mobile marketing yet plan on buying mobile marketing in 2010.
30% of best ad agencies say that mobile marketing has become an integral part of the advertising media mix. Among full service ad agencies that have run mobile marketing campaigns, 78% said that they met campaign goals, while 80% said that they developed internal resources to support mobile efforts.
The proliferation of Google Android-based devices, such as smartphones, should help full service ad agencies, such as a retail advertising agency, an automotive ad agency, or a public relations agency more easily run campaigns across different smartphones.
Last time I talked about addressing your prospects' problems through relevant direct mail messaging. This time I will talk about using direct mail advertising and email advertising together to drive up response rates.
Because of the recession, some people have been discontinuing their direct mail campaigns because they think it is not cost effective enough. However, as an automotive ad agency, a retail advertising agency, and a professional services advertising agency, we like to think that we know what we're talking about. We know that the real metric we should be looking at is not just investment cost, but ROI. According to the experts, direct mail followed up by an email has a much higher ROI than either form of communication alone when running an integrated marketing campaign. Direct mail by itself also has a higher ROI with business-to-business when running a single faceted campaign.
The reasons for this are as follows. Most of the time, direct mail lists are alot cleaner than email advertising lists. Also, generally speaking, people are more accepting of unsolicited mail than they are of unsolicited email. After all, it's much more likely to open up an email and get a computer virus than it is to open up some mail and get an actual virus. Next, for business-to-business, direct mail is still delivered even if the prospect is no longer with the company. Email addresses, on the other hand, are usually turned off when a person leaves an organization. Think of all the people that got laid off in the recession and how many email addresses must have been turned off. Lastly, direct mail is subject to an infinite amount of creative possibilities, whereas something like print advertising, television advertising, or billboard advertising always has to follow a certain preset format. Even email advertising has to follow a specific template most of the time. But direct mail advertising is only limited by your own creativity.
Direct mail is a great way to increase your b-to-b clientele, especially as part of an integrated marketing campaign. And because of the recession, the cost for direct mail has actually gone down. Use direct mail to start a conversation with your prospects; follow up that conversation with an email; direct that prospect to your online assets; and finish the conversation with a sale.
In the last post, I wrote about optimizing your website to tell Google and your visitors where you are and what you do. But another important online place where it's absolutely critical to clearly identify where you are and what you do is your local business profile on Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local.
Your Categories
In Google Maps, you can categorize your business in up to 5 categories. They may be standard categories that are provided by Google Maps or those that you can create yourself. Use 1-2 of the standard Google Maps categories that best fit your business, and then create 3-4 that contain your best keyword terms plus the geography terms for which you want to be found.
For example, as a New Jersey marketing company, we classify ourselves in the already established categories of Advertising, and Marketing. For our other four categories we use the top keyword phrases for which we want to be found, such as cable advertising, outdoor advertising, radio advertising, print advertising, traditional media advertising, or automotive ad agency.
The categories you choose may be based on any criteria that are important to you. Some suggestions are your most profitable procedures or the categories in which your strongest competitors have categorized themselves. The categories may also be based on some other criteria known only to you.
Use geographic terms in your categories in order to make it completely clear to Google where you do business. Using the names of nearby areas may also help your site rank better for those searches. For example, our office is in Westfield, NJ, but most searchers use "New Jersey" or "NJ" in their queries, so we use New Jersey terms in our categories instead of Westfield terms.
However, Yahoo Local and Bing Local do not allow you to create your own categories. So you must choose as many categories as you are allowed, picking the most appropriate and most important first.
Your Descriptions
Also use geography terms within the description area of your profiles, where you have complete control of what is written. These descriptions are crawled and indexed by the local spiders, so make certain they find your most important geographic terms within them.
Your Attributes
Attributes (only in Google Maps) allow you to go crazy with terms to tell spiders and humans what you do and where you do it. You can, in essence, create and name a field whatever you want and then populate it with terms describing that property.
Almost every business pulls people from both its immediate location and surrounding areas. So, you could create a field named Locations Served and list the towns and neighborhoods near you and from which your business typically draws customers.
Some business, like plumbing, carpet cleaning, lawn care, and pet sitting go to the customer instead of customers coming to them. For a business like this, you could title a field Service Areas and list the places where you are willing to travel to provide your services.
You can also include attributes that allow you to use keyword terms that contain geographic modifiers. For example, if you have an advertising agency in New Jersey, you could create a field titled New Jersey Marketing Services and populate it with terms like "New Jersey marketing", "traditional media in NJ", "best ad agency NJ", "online marketing consultants NJ", "public relations NJ", and "New jersey retail advertising agency". This is an effective way to help you rank for long-tail terms that apply to where you are and what you do.
Your Coupons
Although not every business type has been traditionally associated with coupons, creative entrepreneurs are finding ways to use them to their benefit. Nearly every business can offer some sort of discount or value-added coupon for its goods or services. For inspiration you can look around to see what your competitors are doing with coupons. Then, when you create your coupons, include your best keyword terms plus your location in the offers.
It's highly likely that attributes from Google Maps Local Business Listings and coupons from all of the platforms are pushed out to other places on the Web, such as Google Base and coupon Web sites, so the impact can be very far-ranging.
Local business listings are designed to help searchers find businesses in particular geographic locations. Make it easy for Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local to tell where you are and what you do to increase the odds they will find your business when a relevant search is made.
By now, all you car dealers must know that having an internet presence is necessary for your business to succeed. It's certainly not enough to just have a website. You need an entire comprehensive internet marketing strategy. A good automotive ad agency will offer a greatly scalable website, SEO capabilities, an SEM campaign, and e-commerce solutions, all tied together with trackability. But how do you know which advertising agency you should go with?
The first thing that comes to mind is experience. Has the agency that you are considering had enough experience in the marketplace? Is it capable of innovation when it comes to new and exciting automotive marketing ideas. Agencies with experience have had the time to develop strategies to keep up with the pace of the marketplace. These are usually the agencies that are leaders in their areas of business.
The second thing is, of course, the services that the automotive ad agency offers. Does it just offer website hosting, or just website creation? Does it offer an entire comprehensive package of internet marketing tools? It would be best for you if you can consolidate your internet marketing strategy into one agency and not have to go to a number of separate agencies for each internet marketing service. Again, larger companies with more experience will most likely fit this bill.
Finally, the agency's reputation for increasing actual automotive sales leads should be the deciding factor if you're still on the fence. Being able to carry out a comprehensive internet marketing strategy is all well and good, but if it doesn't increase your sales leads then what are you really paying for? The ability to increase sales leads should always be the bottom line for any full service ad agency.
You need to budget as much as you can into your online efforts.If you hire an advertising agency, you should redirect a good portion of your marketing budget towards that endeavor.However, if you decide to tackle your online marketing efforts on your own, you need to keep a few things in mind when budgeting.
There’s a lot that goes into an online marketing department.Of course you have to hire staff (creative staff for the writing and design, IT staff for logistics, and probably an experienced online marketing consultant to act as the department head).You need to get proper equipment, which includes a top-of-the-line computer (you definitely don’t want to deal with lag when running an internet marketing campaign).You need to have software so your internet marketing department can do its work.You need to have tracking programs so you know how much traffic your online campaign is building.
It’s like going to Vegas, or Atlantic City for us Jersey folk.To win big you need to play big.The more you invest, the more return you can potentially see (of course there’s always the chance that you’ll fail completely, but what’s business without risk).Of course with all the required investments in creating your own online marketing department, the bill can run up pretty high.If you’re a small business with a limited amount of capital, you might want to consider hiring an advertising agency. Or if you're a small business with little to no time on your hands, such as a retailer or car dealer, you may even want to hire a niche specific advertising agency, like an automotive ad agency, or a retail advertising agency. But if you can afford to allocate the necessary funds and time into an in-house online marketing department, then by all means do so.
There are many advertising agencies out there. Some are industry specific agencies, such as an automotive ad agency, or a retail advertising agency. Others are agencies that work in any industry. Depending on your preferences, you can go with either one. But finding a full service ad agency with good online marketing consultants should be a little bit of a process. It is a lot like shopping for a car.You definitely don’t buy the first car that you see.You shop around, look for the best deal, the best prices, and the best product.Well, you should go through that same process for hiring the best ad agency as well.
First of all, you should find out whether the advertising agency actually does search engine optimization, or if they just claim to do so but do something else in reality.I know that some New Jersey marketing companies claim to perform SEO services, but instead they just buy the sponsored links at the top of the search results page.Anyone can do that, you don’t need an SEO consultation firm to do that for you.The whole point of SEO is improving organic search results, that is to say, all the search results that come underneath the sponsored links.Improving organic search results has nothing to do with buying sponsored links from Google or Yahoo.
Secondly, you’ll want to find out if the full service ad agency only offers SEO services, or if they also offer all other types of internet marketing services.The other types of online marketing are SEM – search engine marketing (that’s where the buying of sponsored links comes in), email advertising, website design, website development, and pay-per-click (PPC, sometimes referred to as CPC, or cost-per-click).The best ad agencies even do their own website hosting.A great internet marketing campaign will utilize all aspects of internet marketing, not just one.
Your website will probably be the most important and powerful marketing tool that you’ll have, so make sure that your advertising agency is on the same page as you when it comes to long term success.And as when dealing with any salesperson, pay attention to how your questions are being answered (are they actually answering your questions or just beating around the bush), ask for references, and most of all, trust your gut (human intuition exists for a reason).
The internet is a great forum to cultivate A.D.D. habits. Most people using it get bored very quickly. A big reason why a lot of websites start out good but then fall off the radar is that they are not updated. Any online marketing consultant can tell you that your website's structure, layout, and content plays a big role in your online marketing efforts. As a result, your website needs to be updated regularly. That doesn’t mean that you need to constantly add new content every second. But it does mean that it heavily depends on your industry.
Let's say that you are a car dealer. One of many great automotive marketing ideas is to keep your website updated with new car models, new deals, or even future concept cars from the manufacturer. Your website's job is to keep the audience interested and entertained. Imagine if all the car enthusiasts in your area went to your website. Even if they go there to just be entertained (by any interactive media you may have on the website, or just videos) chances are that they will buy from you when looking for their next car.
If you regularly update your website with new content relevant to your industry, you can seem like THE industry expert. Most people don't want to be sold, especially by any random schmoe who doesn't know about the product/service itself, but rather knows only how to sell the product/service. Most people want to know that they are getting solid, factual information from people who know what they are talking about. By keeping your website updated regularly, you can be that person/business. Your website can be THE place that people go to for information regarding your industry. Take us for example. We are part automotive ad agency, part retail advertising agency, and part public relations agency. As an internet marketing best practice, we keep our main website, which is our blog site, constantly updated. We blog about marketing techniques, marketing services, and current events in the world of advertising. Even though we really just got the ball rolling, by updating regularly we will soon have enough content on our site to be considered scholars or experts in the industry. Once we've accomplished that goal, once we've established ourselves as industry experts, converting leads to sales will be much easier. When people think that you are an expert in your industry, they rightly assume that you know what you are doing. You will no longer have to go out of your way to sell, as your expertise will sell itself.
So, depending on whatever industry your business is a part of, you’ll need to update your website daily, weekly, monthly, or whatever consumers of your industry demand (aren’t we all at the mercy of our customers). But beware, once you start updating your content more quickly, your site visitors will expect the content to be updated in that same frequency for the rest of your site’s lifespan. So be like the tortoise, start out slow and pace yourself. You can regularly update your site with new content such as pics, videos, or even text. That way, your regular visitors won’t abandon your site completely.
BOC Partners, Inc. is a privately held advertising agency located at 1030 South Ave West, Westfield, NJ. For the most part, we act as an aggressive retail advertising agency and provide marketing solutions to the most demanding of advertisers. One of our areas of expertise is the automotive sector as we work with many large retail automotive dealerships. For 25 years BOC Partners has been winning over the likes of this category of business, which provides BOC the resources to handle just about any advertiser for any industry. The volume of work and demands of "turn on a dime" deadlines gives BOC Partners the skill set to handle almost any task.
In the past 3 years BOC Partners has been called upon to provide its experience to other retail markets including professional services, consumer electronics, home improvement and real estate, financial institutions, as well as B to B (business to business) accounts. We specialize in both traditional media (print media, direct-mail advertising, broadcast communications, etc.) and online marketing (search engine optimization and marketing, email advertising, web site design, traffic analysis, etc.). Both our internet marketing campaigns and traditional marketing campaigns serve one end goal, increasing our clients’ sales; because as we all know, at the end of the day, sales are the only thing that matter (well, to businesses anyway).
Need assistance with your advertising strategy? Call us 877-876-2995!
Join Our Mailing List
Search This Blog
Subscribe to this blog
That's an RSS feed. Just click on it to receive content updates.
