PPC Advertising Is Not For Novices

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a challenging, dynamic endeavor. You can't just set it up and walk away from it. PPC advertising requires constant monitoring and tweaking to be effective.

Those who first launch a PPC advertising campaign are usually disappointed by the results. Expectations are high; results are low. That's because the initial launch parameters are just a starting point (i.e., your best guess based on keyword research, etc.). From that point on, be prepared to make adjustments to inch towards desired results.

The tools to refinement are provided by the PPC vendor. Google, for example, has excellent tools...if you know how to use them. For example, what ads and what keywords are giving you the best results? Narrow down your market attack to get more bang for your advertising dollar.

Here are some other parameters to employ in optimizing your advertising campaign:

• Set up your ads to run during daylight hours (why spread your budget over ad impressions in the middle of the night?).
• Focus your ads geographically (city (also by zip or radius from a zip), region, country, language, etc.)
• Unless you are selling consumer products or really know what you are doing, avoid settings that display your ads on other Websites, but do take advantage of having your ads appear on major auxiliary search engines (e.g., AOL).
• Target your keyword bids to get your ads to appear in positions 3 to 5 - your money will go further and you will still get good results.

Of course, the purpose of PPC advertising is to sell something or capture a sales lead. Hence, your real measurement of success is not how many ad clicks you get, but how many of those click-throughs turn into useful conversions that lead to more business.

Most PPC advertisers take the clickers to the home page (or an internal page) of their Website. What happens thereafter, nobody knows because there is no easy way to track clicker behavior. Most wander around and leave the site because material germane to the reason they clicked on the ad is not readily apparent. And there is no way of knowing how many ad click-throughs turn into customers or at least prospects. So, these advertisers spend a lot of money without any means of determining whether their advertising bucks are worth the effort.

That's why it is critically important that you have special landing pages where ad clickers find content relevant to the ad AND the ability to make a purchase or fill out a form to acquire an incentive. Completing this desired process is the goal of your campaign, and by arriving at a "thank you" page afterwards, you can measure how many ad click-throughs actually result in achieving this goal. Inserting special code into a "thank you" page allows the PPC vendor to report how many conversions your campaign is achieving and the cost for each. This is the real cost for your PPC advertising.

By tracking your PPC advertising results through the entire sales process, you can measure your return on investment. For example, if you sell Widgets at $10 each and the PPC advertising cost to achieve a sale is $1, then it's working for you. If PCC advertising costs $10 per resultant sale, then you probably want to re-think your marketing strategy.

PPC advertising is not for the novice. You can burn through a lot of money very quickly with little or no results. In the long run, small businesses are much better off by employing a professional, such as Pacifica Endeavors, who understand the pitfalls and can fast-track PPC advertising while saving them money. The result can be a dramatic growth in sales within one-to-two months, which more than compensates for the advertising expense.

Get More Mileage with Internet Marketing Compared to Traditional Marketing!

I'm often surprised by how many small companies haven't yet grasped that Internet marketing is far more economical and yields much better results than traditional hard-print marketing. Compared to the latter, online marketing yields a significantly higher ROI.

Having a good Website that is optimized for search engines is a first step. Once accomplished, ongoing expense is minimal. Email newsletters cost less than a penny apiece compared to about $.50 each (minimum) for direct mail pieces. And online press releases reach a larger audience than hard-print coverage. Moreover, pay-per-click advertising costs only a fraction of - and is much, much more effective than - newspaper or magazine advertising.

In short, Internet marketing is the perfect answer for small businesses on a budget. Done right, it can dramatically increase sales while saving a bundle over traditional marketing. Contact Small Business Smart Marketing for a free consultation.

Close Sales with Testimonials and Reference Letters

Never underestimate the value of a customer testimonial or reference letter. Whether you sell a product or service on the Internet or by direct sales force (or both), these are gold!

Prospective customers feel more comfortable making a "buy" decision if your business has glowing endorsements from existing customers. In their eyes, this reduces the risk of selecting your company as their vendor. So, always ask for a reference letter or testimonial upon completing projects or transactions.

If your business has performed as agreed, there will be no problem getting this endorsement. You can actually ensure this by writing it yourself and then emailing the "draft" to the customer to get their blessing, asking them "if they want to make any changes."

Place one-to-two paragraph testimonials in conspicuous places on your Website. If you have a direct sales force, make sure customer reference letters are printed on the customer's letterhead and signed. Often, a prospect will even forego calling references if your sales people give them high-caliber endorsement letters at an appropriate stage in the sales cycle. These are great closing tools!

What You Need to Know About Google PPC Advertising

Google pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a great way for small businesses and start-ups to acquire sales. After all, Google owns 70 percent of the search engine market, and your prospective customers are likely to us it to hunt for a product or service just like yours. While PPC advertising can help your company, there are also major pitfalls to avoid.

Let's start with the major advantages:

• You can gain instant Internet visibility while your Website bubbles up in organic search engine rankings.
• Your ads appear right at the moment someone is searching for your product or service!
• You are only charged when someone actually clicks on your ad…otherwise, it’s free!

But to take advantage of PPC advertising, you have to really understand how it works. In short, Google PPC advertising is not for novices. Trust me, if you just follow Google directions and recommendations, you can blow through a lot of money really fast with minimal results.

The major mistakes small businesses and start-ups make when using PPC advertising are:

• Not setting objectives, a strategy or computing break-even economics.
• Failure to perform keyword research; bidding primarily on popular (costly) keywords.
• Not using negative keywords to optimize your budget.
• Poorly written or misleading ads which result in ineffective clicks.
• Failure to incorporate keywords in your ads
• Clicking on an ad takes the user to your Website Home page where they get lost and quickly move on. Either take the clicker to a specific page in your site or (preferred) a landing page related to the ad content.
• No lead capture or purchase mechanism.
• Failure to actively manage campaigns.
• Unable to measure return on investment.

And you can't master Google PPC advertising without devoting considerable time and, yes, money in the process. The industry is full of horror stories about first-timers who tried it and were shocked at the bill they received on their credit cards. Hiring a knowledgeable, experienced person to launch and manage your PPC campaigns is worth every penny. In the long run, you'll save money while profitably grow your sales.

If you wish to proceed on your own despite this advice, for God's sake set a minimal budget so you can play with the PPC variables and learn the Google ropes without breaking your bank. If you want affordable professional assistance, give us (http://www.smallbizsmartmarketing.com/) or a knowledgeable consultant a call. You won't regret it.

Your Website IS your Business Credibility!

Today, a business Website can either enhance the credibility of a company or damage it. We live in an online world now, and the first thing sales prospects do is to check out your Website. If it's good, easy to navigate and quickly conveys the nature of your business and differentiating strengths, the site helps sales. If it is obviously home-grown and amateurish, with dead-end pages, the site will destroy your credibility and cost your company sales.

The shame of it is that it doesn't cost that much these days to have someone create a professional Website for your business. No matter what size your organization is, the Internet creates a level playing field. A well-designed site that presents your company in a credible fashion and captures sales leads is worth every penny. And in the process, the new or enhanced site can be optimized for search engine spiders so that your organic ranking improves and brings in even more clients.

The ROI for creating a new site or improving your existing site is extremely high. It is the best, long-lasting investment any business can make in 2008. So, as you draw up your buisness resolutions today, put this at the top of your list!

What is the Purpose of your Website?

There are millions and millions of business Websites on the Internet, and I'm continually surprised by how many were apparently put up without any thought about what was trying to be achieved.

I say this because many are obviously nothing more than online brochures for the business products or services. These treat the Internet the same way as hard-print advertising or collateral materials.

Other business sites are designed for the Internet but are not optimized for search engines. Many also lack a means of capturing sales leads and hard to navigate. Kinda makes me wonder what they were hoping to achieve...

The first and most important step in launching any Website is to define its purpose and goals. Is it to be a reference site? A customer support site? Or, do you want an online marketing machine? The answer determines the resultant site design and content. Conversely, failure to address this subject before building a site will inevitably lead to frustration and expensive site revamping.

So, what do you want your site to do? Is it accomplishing this? Need help?

Market your Website with Free Articles

One of the most inexpensive means of promoting your Website is to create and distribute free articles on the Internet. There are a half-dozen major sites that are dedicated to this purpose and the best part is that is FREE!

And the articles do not have to be long - three or four paragraphs will do. Write about something you know. Keep it narrowly focused and related to the service or product you offer on your Website. Include an author box with an embedded link back to your site. That way, interested readers can go directly to your site to learn more. Articles are a great sales lead generator!

Moreover, free articles get widespread distribution on the Internet. They are picked up by other blogs, Websites and newsletters for content. So, your free article (with its embedded link back to your site) results in an explosion of one-way links back to your site and considerable traffic boost.

There's nothing not to like about using free article distribution as a means to improve your Website traffic and search engine ranking. Contact us if you need help getting this going.

The Importance of Disaster Recovery

The San Diego firestorm (and yes, I live in a threaten area near Fallbrook in north San Diego county) reminds us just how important it is to be prepared for a disaster. For a business, this means having one or backup copies of critical records. Studies have demonstrated time and again that businesses which are unable to recover critical information typically fail after a disaster.

And it's not enough to just have a backup copy of important information. You need to have backups that are stored off-site or are at least portable. For those of you who operate home businesses, backup your data daily to removeable disks (e.g., a zip drive or memory stick) or to a portable external drive that can be quickly disconnected and thrown into a travel bag. Some home businesses even use different memory sticks for specific files. Store at least one copy off-site (someone else's home, a safe deposit box, etc.). Have a dedicated fire-proof and water-proof safe box to preserve data stored on removeable storage devices.

Ideally, critical data should be backed up to a remote site that can be readily accessed from any location for fast recovery. Inexpensive online services, like Carbonite, that provide continuous, secure background backup over the Internet are a good, easy solution.

Don't feel snug if you have important information in an online Website database and not at your your business or home office location. After all, what happens if the Website location suffers a fire, flood, tornado or terrorist event? Always download and backup your Website on a periodic basis. Likewise, maintain duplicate backup files of really critical information, rather than entirely trusting your livelihood to a remote backup site.

Finally, make sure your backup solution allows you to quickly access or repopulate data. It does no good to protect critical information if you run into problems when you try to restore it.

You won't realize how very important your business records are until you actually face a disaster...and by then it's too late if you haven't taken prior precautions.

Creating Market Awareness for your Products or Services

Public relations ("PR") is not a black art. It is as essential for small businesses as it is for large corporations. Let's face it - it's hard to sell your product or service if the market you are targeting has never heard of you.

Of course, you can blanket your target market with expensive advertising in magazines, the radio, television or newspapers. But did you know you can accomplish much the same thing through effective PR programs? In many ways, PR is "free" advertising and often much more effective than expensive alternatives.

Public relations takes many forms. It can be a press release that takes on a life of its own on the Internet, placing an article about your company in a widely read publication, having a published interview, winning an industry award, or briefing industry analysts. These activities spread your message in an effective, credible fashion.

Online press releases and articles contain embedded links back to your Website. Since these get picked up by other Websites, newsletters and blogs, interested readers often follow the embedded links to your Website. This increases your Website traffic. Also, having incoming links from other Internet entities drives up your organic search engine ranking. It's a win-win situation!

Use Google PPC Conversion Tracking to Determine Advertising ROI

Google PPC advertising (Adwords) is effective, but can be a very scary proposition. if you don't know what you're doing, you can burn through a lot of money very quickly with little or no results. In short, it really, really pays to employ a knowledgeable person to set up your Google PPC advertising.

Google Adwords has a neat feature that allows you to track the business results from your online advertising. Essentially, it works like this:

• Set up your Google ad campaign
• Each Google ad should go to a separate "landing page" where you present your sales argument and have a lead capture form or "buy" button.
• When a prospect clicks on the "Submit" or "Buy" button on the landing page, you should have a "Thank You" page to which they are automatically transferred. The only way anyone can get to the "Thank You" page is by clicking on a button on the ad landing page.
• Google Adwords provides a conversion tracking feature that generates specific code which can be inserted on the Thank You" page for each landing page. This code notifies Google when someone arrives on the "Thank You" page.

Thus, Google will record all arrivals at each "Thank You" page as a lead or sales conversion for the landing page tied to a specific ad. This data is displayed in your campaign summary by Google Adwords. In effect, this tells you how well an ad and its associated landing page is performing in converting ad click-throughs into either revenue or sales leads. This is your "return on investment (ROI)" for Google advertising.

Knowing your ROI for Google advertising is essential. Without it, you have no way of measuring how much a lead or purchase is costing you in terms of advertising dollars. If it's too high, PPC advertising may not be the answer for you. A high ROI figure can also alert you to the need to improve your conversion rate by tweaking your ads and./or landing pages.

Need help with Google PPC advertising? Contact a professional at Small Business Smart Marketing: (866) 284-4955 or via email at info@smallbizsmartmarketing.com.

The Fastest Way for a New Company to get Sales

When you finally launch that new business, you probably start your marketing campaign with a Website. But it takes a long, long time for your Website to bubble up in organic search engine ranking. So until it does, you're still invisible on the Internet. Meanwhile, you need sales and money to pay bills. Right?

Want to know how you can quickly begin to generate sales leads from the Internet? It's simple - implement a local pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign. That way, your PPC ad will be visible to Internet searchers at the exact moment they are looking for what you're selling. This overcomes the weaknesses of your Website being nowhere in sight in organic search returns. And you are only charged when someone actually clicks on your ad. Otherwise, it's highly-visible free advertising.

Done right, local PPC advertising can be VERY effective...and very economical. But setting up PPC advertising is not for amateurs. Believe me, you can run through a lot of money real fast with little or no results. Google and Yahoo have their own algorithms for managing PPC advertising and they are not obvious, nor do they necessarily work to your favor.

It pays to engage an experienced PPC advertising manager to set-up, optimize and manage your online advertising campaign. Someone who knows how to create winning landing pages that capture leads or gain online sales after a rpospective customer clicks on your ad. You will save money and start generating sales sooner by turning to someone who knows what they are doing. Just ask anyone who rushed into PPC advertising - I'm sure they'll echo these sentiments.

Need help launching your PPC advertising? Contact us at info@smallbizsmartmarketing.com or at (866) 284-4955. ;~)

All You Need is a Website to Get Internet Business. Right?

The days when you could just put up a Website for your business and wait for sales leads to come rolling in are long gone. It's amazing how many small business Websites are actually "invisible" on the Internet.

Today, your Website must be optimized for those little critters known as "search engine spiders" that continuously crawl the Internet, indexing and updating a humongous database of Websites. Next, you need a sustained program to acquire cross-links with complementary sites, something that all search engines place a high value on in determining your site ranking. And you need a form or two on your site to collect sales leads. Finally, you need meaningful content on your site, and the more often you update your content, the better Google and other search engines like your site.

Don't kid yourself - all this takes work...lots of work. But the results can be phenomenal. I've seen small businesses go from zero Internet business to being bombarded with leads in just a matter of a few weeks. Done right, Internet marketing does work!

An easy way to find out what you can do to boost Internet lead generation is to take advantage of our Online Marketing Appraisal. We will examine your site and prepare a custom report with specific recommendations for turning it into a powerful Internet marketing machine.

Organizing Your Customer and Prospect Marketing

As your small business grows and you pick up clients and solicit prospects, it becomes very important to organize your customers and manage them properly. That's where customer relationship management (CRM) software earns its money.

With a CRM solution, you can easily keep track of your customer and prospect contacts, their status in the sales funnel and even create a unique marketing program for each. The latter is especially important. If you lay out a series of steps in your marketing program (e.g., send customized greeting, sign up for email newsletter, send autoresponder set of special offers, etc.), then you can rest assured that you will not neglect to nurture your customers or pursue possible new clients.

Remember, it costs a lot more to capture a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. Also, it is easier to sell more products or services to an existing customer than a new one. And finally, nurturing prospective customers through ongoing marketing messages helps to close sales.

For small businesses, an easy CRM answer can be found online at www.zohoCRM.com. This Web-based service is free for up to three users in your company. I use it and recommend that you take a look at it.

Is Your Website Search Engine Friendly?

The days when you could just put up a Website for your business and wait for sales leads to come rolling in are long gone. It's amazing how many small business Websites are actually "invisible" on the Internet.

Today, your Website must be optimized for those little critters known as "search engine spiders" that continuously crawl the Internet, indexing and updating a humongous database of Websites. If these spiders can't easily traverse your site, you are in trouble. If they can't readily identify your line of business through indicated keywords, you've got problems. If your site is in a heavily competitive marketplace and it's not optimized for a specific market niche, it could take a long, long time before you see it showing up in the first three pages of search results. And if you don't show up in the first three pages, chances are that the only way your marketplace will ever know you exist is if you point them to your Website address.

Of course, it takes more than just search engine optimization to turn your Website into a high-power lead generator. Most search engines also place a heavy factor on the number and quality of incoming links as a measure of your site's popularity. And that takes a lot of work to achieve.

An easy way to determine if your site is search engine friendly is to take advantage of our Online Marketing Appraisal. Our experts will examine your site and issue a custom report with specific recommendations about what you can do to turn your site into an Internet marketing machine.

Memorial Day Thoughts

Unless you have actually been in a war, it is hard to understand why veterans hate war and will do anything to prevent it. War is barbarism. War is seeing your friends die...everyday. War is giving up hope of ever returning home again to your loved ones. War is despair.

There is no such thing as a "smart bomb." Once the "dogs of war" are let loose, there is no controlling them. Death sweeps the land and feeds on itself. War quickly becomes senseless killing.

I cringe when I hear politicians who went out of their way to avoid the draft and Vietnam talk about "sacrifice" and "supporting the troops." Yet, they are so willing to send our sons and daughters off to the black hole of Iraq to die for their discredited beliefs.

If there could be just one change to the Constitution, I would like it to be that politicians could not vote for - or simply launch - war unless they committed to have their own children, brothers, sisters and other relatives between the ages of 18 and 45 actively participate in a combat zone. Do you think that would have changed the Iraq vote?

Have a Great Idea? Sell It on a Single-Page Website!

Do you have a great idea? Did you come up with a better "widget" that you know will knock the world dead? Well, now you can begin marketing your widget worldwide within just a few days.

A great way to give your idea life is to launch a single-page Website as a 24x7 marketing machine that has but one purpose - to generate widget sales or capture leads. And you can accomplish this for under $4 monthly!

If your widget really is a great idea, you will be surprised how effective a single-page Website is. It is easier to optimize for the search engines too. For example, if you get a pertinent domain name, such as http://www.widget.com/, implementing the right meta tags and keyword densities is much simpler than a normal business Website. And you can have this for under $4 monthly in hosting fees!

The good news is that you don't have to understand how to put up a Website, how to write persuasive site content, how to create and insert order forms or set up online payment. We can do all that for you. Moreover, your "great idea" can be transformed into a dynamite Internet marketing machine within just a few days. Throw in some targeted pay per click advertising and watch your sales grow.

Contact us to learn just how affordable it is to launch your better widget.

The Evolution of Online Advertising

There are changes occurring in online advertising. Google is experimenting with pay-per-conversion advertising, wherein advertisers will only be charged when a prospect actually takes a desired landing page action (e.g., filling out the lead capture form) and winds up on the site's thank-you (i.e., "conversion") page. This will take of click fraud. It is also a more meaningful way of charging for online advertising. Expect Yahoo and others to follow Google's lead on this.

Another innovative approach is "pay per call" advertising introduced by Ingenio. It works in much the same fashion as current PPC advertising. You create an ad, set your bid price for calls, and then your ad appears across the Ingenio Advertising Network which includes AOL Search and other sites. However, you are only charged when an interested prospect actually calls you!

Search engine advertising, which is the fuel driving Internet marketing, is evolving. Just look at recent innovations in local PPC advertising. What's exciting is that this change is being driven by both technology and customer demands. I think this is a good thing. It will benefit all small businesses by letting us get more "bang for the buck."

Business Plan Sanity Check

For a small business or start-up, getting a "sanity check" for your business plan from an experienced consultant can mean the difference between success and failure. The small expense of having an experienced person review your business plan (or simply your strategy, whether it's written down or not) is more than recovered by the insights gained and the avoidance of costly pitfalls.

And for those of you who do not have a written plan that has been scrutinized by someone who is "business knowledgeable," recognize that you are winging it! Are your goals realistic? Are they achievable? Are they even the right goals for your business? And do you have realistic action plans to achieve your goals? Are you leveraging your strengths while minimizing your weaknesses? If you don't know the answers to questions like these, you may already be headed for serious trouble.

Too often, start-ups and small businesses don't even see trouble coming until it is too late to do something about it. That's the purpose of a well-thought-out business plan - to look ahead and increase your odds of success by avoiding likely speed bumps. The failure rate of businesses who don't take the time to think through their objectives and strategies is dramatically higher than those who accomplish this upfront and perform at least annual reviews.

Without a roadmap for your business, how will you know if you're going in the right direction? If you don't have the experience, aptitude or skills to prepare a business plan, then employ a knowledgeable consultant to help you put one together. It will be the best money you ever spend.

Are You Invisible on the Internet?

Here's a good exercise. Create a matrix with five columns and five rows. Blank out the upper left cell, but label the other four top horizontal cells, "Google," "Yahoo," "MSN," and "Ask." Then place your Website's top four keyword phrases in the left column. Now, do a search under each search engine and list your position among the returns in the appropriate cell. For example, if one of my key phrases is "curved widgets," and my site came up on page 2 in the number five position when I enter that phrase into the Google search box, I would enter "page 2 - 5" under the Google column for that phrase.

If you do this for your top four keyword phrases, you will get a real good idea of how well your site is optimized for the four search engines that account for at least 98 percent of all Internet searches.

If your Website isn't showing up within the first three pages of search engine returns (for your strategic keywords or phrase), then you are invisible on the Internet! If your site shows up on page 1 for all search engines for all keyword phrases, you walk on water. If it's somewhere in between, you have some work to do.

For anything but the "walk on water" results, there are two things you can do to drive more traffic to your Website. First (obviously) is to improve your search engine optimization as necessary. This is a long-term solution that takes time to implement and show results. Secondarily, you can utilize targeted, local pay-per-click advertising to get economical leads while your organic search-engine ranking climbs a competitive ladder to success.

Go ahead - grab a pencil and perform this exercise. The results may surprise you. Need help?

Every Small Business Needs An Internet Marketing Strategy

It is almost impossible for a small business to survive today without a Website. If you don't have one, you are just not credible. Moreover, since most Americans go online to find goods and services, you will miss out by not being included in the world's largest virtual directory. Of course, this means that a small business must also have its site optimized for its keywords, or it will still be invisible on the Internet. And, as long as your business is online, why not leverage it to capture sales leads or boost your revenues by letting customer buy online?

Plus, it is easy and economical to employ local online advertising to boost awareness of your business. Free local listings are available from Google and others. Moreover, local pay-per-click advertising is very cost-effective. This is where your ad only appears to those in your local marketing area and you are only charged a small fee if and when they click on it.

So, if your business doesn't have a Website, get one! And if your Website is doing nothing for you, fix it. Contact me, and I'll give you a quick evaluation of your online situation and how you can turn it into a money machine.