Sports radio ratings aren’t as high as many people thought.
For big games, ratings shoot way up. But there are only a handfull of big games in any season. For other games, ratings drop way down.
As a result, the radio advertising rates that stations used to get for their live sports coverage have gone down significantly, by about 20% to 30%. Industry sources reveal that some stations radio advertising rates have dropped even more than that.
Some people think that the more accurate the ratings data is, the better it will be for everybody, even if it means stations having to reduce their radio advertising rates.
One such person is Bob Snyder, founder of Beason Broadcast Partners, which consults with sports radio stations and sports franchises on ad sales. He thinks that the more reliable ratings data serves to build credibility with New Jersey marketing companies, advertisers, and retail advertising agencies, making sports play-by-play broadcasts that much more attractive for advertising.
However, others think that the numbers don’t tell the whole story when it comes to play-by-play sports.
Tim McCarthy, senior vice president of radio at ESPN, says that overworked media buyers, who face tons of pressure from clients to get the best deal, only look at the numbers and without taking into account the unique, passionate audience that radio broadcasts deliver.
“What’s the value of a Yankees/Red Sox game or a Bears/Packers game? These are rivalries that have packed arenas for years. They have value. To say no one cares is not true.”
The problem is that radio stations are seeing less radio advertising revenue from broadcasting rights they agreed to pay big dollars for before the more accurate ratings data was released.
Those deals, since they are no longer profitable for the radio station, create a problem for the station's bottom line. However they are still valuable because they set in place a station's position in the market.
Now is the time to invest in radio advertising since the rates have become incredibly low. You can get more air time and reach more people with the same amount of investment, thereby drastically increasing your ROI.
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.
The economy is springing back into action, and as such, this is your opportunity to position your business as THE place to go to for your product/service. By expanding your advertising budget, as the now growing economy will enable you, you can add value that will result in increased reach and frequency. Both of these are essential to getting more business and increasing profits. In the next couple of posts, I will explain how you can add value to your advertising campaign so that your ad dollars aren't wasted.
The first thing to remember is that leads are much more important than branding right now. When revamping your ad campaign, or starting a new business, generating new leads is key, even if your public relations agency or full service ad agency tells you different.
Of course branding will help to create a strong identity, and a fancy logo can help achieve that. But nothing creates a stronger identity than giving the best products/services to alot of consumers. So, if your a retailer, make sure that your retail advertising agency is spending more time at generating leads than it is at branding. Thus, it's critical that your ads can be responded to, so have a call-to-action, whether it's a "call us" or a "click here".
Your business needs to be the provider of sought after products/services, especially for people actively looking for lower-cost and better products/services. You need to be able to find a full service ad agency that can deliver your message to consumers. I went over how to find the best ad agency for you in an older post.
Next time, I will go over negotiating and leveraging.
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.
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.
What and where? These are the two big questions that must be answered over and over again in local SEM.
Local searchers ask these questions implicitly and explicitly. In some cases, geo-terms are used and in other cases they aren't. For example, search queries can be "best ad agency in NJ," "cable advertising NJ" or simply "best ad agency" or "cable advertising."
Search engines such as Google and Yahoo want to know the same things about your business that searchers want to know. Where is it and what products/services does it offer?
Are you answering these critical questions for your potential sales leads as well as the search engines?
Many times local businesses choose online marketing consultants based on the attractiveness of the websites they create without giving any thought to SEO. Even those website designers who know how to help with search rankings are rarely knowledgeable enough about the specifics of ranking for local search. As a result, the local business owner ends up with a beautiful website that never ranks for competitive keywords or attracts any new customers.
By following a few simple tips and tricks, you can prevent this from happening to your online marketing investment.
Your Home Page
You need to make it clear to people who land on your page what you do and where you do it. Simply because everyone in New Jersey knows where Broad Street is, it doesn't mean that everyone who sees a Broad Street address on your website will know that you're in New Jersey. The searcher may be entirely new to the area or just passing through, which may be the reason why someone may be searching for your business in the first place.
So, if you're a New Jersey marketing firm, don't expect people to look around to find that information on your site. Say it clearly near the top of the page and do it in text form, that way it is unmistakable to the search engines as well as to the searchers. Don't assume anything! It's important to make this information so clear that it can't possibly be misunderstood.
Your Page Title
This is the most important ranking factor for SEM. And if that isn't enough of a reason, then think about it from the human point of view.
Google displays the page title as the headline in the listing that appears for your pages in the SERPs. If someone is for searching for "marketing companies new jersey" and the headline they see in the search results says "THE Best of the Best Marketing Companies in NJ," it'll grab their attention much better than a headline that says "marketing company".
Google will also bold the words that were in a search query in the title when it appears on the page. So, for example, if a searcher in Central NJ asks for "co-op advertising" and your page title says "The Co-Op Advertising Professionals in Central NJ", then your title will look like this to the searcher: "The Co-Op Advertising Professionals in Central NJ".
Your Meta Tags
Along with your page title, these are also displayed in the SERPs. Meta tags are like the ad copy that entices people to click on your listings and go to your website.
Much like the page title, if your meta tags have the terms used in the search query then Google will bold these words on the SERPs. If the tags don't contain the keyword phrase that was used in the query, then Google will pull a snippet off the page that contains that phrase.
It's important to use your best keyword terms in your meta tags because, even though they may not help your pages to rank, they will likely encourage searchers to click through to your site.
In my next post, I will give more tips and tricks on how to clearly tell the search engines and the searchers where you are and what you do.
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.
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).
Why is data analytics important? Well, have you ever tried to manage something that you haven't measured? You could throw yourself into the deep end of a pool, but if you don't know how to swim then you're going to drown. So how do you stay afloat?You need to invest in measuring and tracking services for all of your web site traffic. Any good full service ad agency with competent online marketing consultants should offer data analytics as a service.
First of all, you need to be able to measure your sheer traffic volume.Traffic volume is the general number of visitors to your website, whether they were online conversions or not.This can give you a clear picture of how many web surfers are even reaching your website, from anywhere on the web.This number is also important because it gives you something to measure everything else against.
Secondly, you need to measure traffic quality.What is the bounce rate of your website?How much time are your visitors spending on your website?These things are important to measure in order to gauge how well your website keeps the attention of its visitors.By measuring this against the traffic volume, you can see what percentage of your visitors is actually staying on your website, versus just looking at it for a couple of seconds and then hitting the back button (or any other way to get off a website so quickly).
Thirdly, you need to determine your traffic sources and measure how many visitors you are getting from each one of those sources.This allows you to see where you are getting your visitors from and enables you to allocate more resources to those traffic sources.You can measure this against traffic quality to see where the most interested visitors are coming from (from which website or link they are being redirected).You can also measure this against traffic volume in order to determine the percentage of visitors from each source.
Fourthly, you need to measure your traffic conversions.Making that sale, i.e. getting that conversion, is the goal of your business.By measuring traffic conversions, you can see how well you are doing in each category.By measuring traffic conversions against all of the above mentioned kinds of data, you can determine where most of your online conversions are coming from, how long each conversion spends on your website, and the percentage of total visitors that become online conversions.
Lastly, you need to determine how often you should analyze these data points.This depends entirely on your business and your industry.It also depends simply on your preference.Some people like to have daily numbers, some like weekly, or monthly, or quarterly, or even annually.The point is that you need to figure out how often you need the data reports in order to be on top of your game.But that is entirely up to you. If you hire an advertising agency, it should give you the option of how frequently you would like to receive your data reports. The best ad agency will analyze your reports for you and tell you how you can improve. But this is of course true not just for internet marketing, but also for traditional media marketing such as television advertising, radio advertising, print advertising, or any outdoor advertising.
Again, these numbers individually won’t mean much.A number by itself is just a number; but together, these numbers will paint a very clear picture of the health of your business.With all of this knowledge, you’ll be able to do everything that is necessary in order for your business to thrive.If you know how to swim, into the deep end you go.
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.
The recession may be bottoming out, but consumer spending is still pretty low. And it won’t get any better for a while. When people are unemployed, they don’t like spending money. And when people are afraid of being laid off, they don’t like spending money. It’s simple psychology. But people not spending money just makes the economy even worse. The economy runs on the transaction of money. If there’s no money being transferred from one person to the next, the economy will sink. So the less people spend, the worse the economy gets, which causes people to spend even less, which in turn makes the economy get worse. It’s simple economics. Everything snowballs. Things just get worse and worse, and people get more and more afraid.
Let’s say that you’re a business. People aren’t buying your product because consumer spending is down. That means less revenue for you. Maybe you have to lay off a few people you can’t afford to keep on. But there’s still work that needs to be done. So the work from the laid off employees gets delegated to the remaining employees. But your remaining employees are already up to their noses in work. So what happens? Productivity gets cut. You’re unable to deliver, which in turn cuts your revenue once more. Even less revenue means even less capital to spend on your marketing strategy, especially if you use an advertising agency. The less money you spend on your advertising agency, the fewer chances you have of gaining new customers. Your revenue once again is either reduced or remains stagnant. Everything is snowballing again.
So how do you save your business? Do you simply stop spending money? If you cut down on marketing costs and stop using your advertising agency, you may save money in the short run, but you’ll lose new customers. So what do you do? How do you reconcile the facts that the less you spend on your advertising agency, the fewer new customers you will have, but the costs of using an advertising agency is simply out of your budget because of low consumer spending? Do you cut off your advertising agency completely? Do you go all out and give massive amounts of money to your advertising agency so they can saturate the market with your ads, all while your simply sitting and hoping for the best? Is there some sort of middle ground?
We consider ourselves one of the best, if not the best ad agency in New Jersey. This is because we are able to utilize our tried and true methods that have been around for a long time while still adapting to the changes brought about with the onset of the future. One of our tried and true marketing campaigns is print advertising.How many people read newspapers/magazines/periodicals each and every day?You guessed it, a whole lot.
Print media is the oldest form of communications technology and as such it is also the oldest medium for advertising.Through print advertising the targeting of your customers becomes incredibly easy.All we have to do is place your ads in any print medium which your customers specifically read, or any industry specific magazines such as Car and Driver (for car nuts) or Game Informer (for video game jocks).And our in house artists can create any advertisements that are to your liking.
Want your business to be advertised in a print medium? Call us at 877-876-2995!
Welcome to BOC Partners, Inc. A unique advertising agency that specializes in both traditional media and online marketing. We consider the term “Ad Agency” a little outdated …like a description used 10 to 20 years ago (think Daren Steven in Bewitched). Our focus is on building traffic, be it showroom traffic, phone traffic, or online traffic. But traffic is only the beginning. We not only practice the art of traffic building, but also the art of increasing conversions while focusing on quality. Located right in the middle of New York City and Philadelphia, we are sitting in two of the top markets in the country, but our great ideas and the best tracking techniques will work anywhere.
Our agency principles have been around for 25 years and that kind of tenure brings the tried and true type of experience that your business can benefit from. We’re not like most marketing companies; we’re more like a consulting firm. We don’t advertise in all arenas just because we can. We’ll figure out what’s best for you, where you can reach the most potential customers, and attack any target marketplace for maximum return. We’re like the military of the marketing world. Research, strategy, planning, and execution…mission accomplished.
BOC Partners provides marketing management, creative design, media buying, SEO, and a lot of other proprietary cool things to make your business successful. We focus on all the primary advertising verticals such as outdoor advertising, print advertising, radio advertising, and television advertising. We're even online marketing consultants. Best of all, all of our solutions are measurable and chances are they out perform 4 of the 5 techniques that you are currently using. We don’t like tooting our own horn (as you can tell by this paragraph), but we are the best at what we do. Everybody seems to be blogging these days, so we figured we’d start too. Besides, we think we have a lot to share with the world, well at least the business world anyway. If you would like to consult with us, call us at 877-876-2995.
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