Search Marketing InsiderPay Per Click, Social Media and SEO Strategies – An Internet Marketing Institute Publication

These days, any conversation about online marketing is required by law (OK, not really) to include extensive discussion of Facebook and Twitter. Social media is heralded as the way to generate buzz and virality, interact with existing customers, create demand among potential customers, and build your brand. Anecdotal evidence is plentiful – consider Orabrush’s 14 million video views on YouTube, Converse’s 15 million fans on Facebook, or Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s 1.8 million followers on Twitter.

These examples show the massive potential reach of social media, but large numbers alone do not a successful marketing campaign make. Indeed, in the world of SEM, success is not measured by clicks or impressions, but by conversions and revenue. A campaign with 15 million clicks in AdWords might be a rousing success – if it drives ROI for your business – but could equally be an utter disaster if these clicks don’t produce revenue.
Because social media marketing frequently does not result in direct revenue for an advertiser, it’s very difficult to determine just how much a fan, follower, or video subscriber is actually worth. Various studies have tried to place numbers around these different social actions, but trying to come up with an “average” value is really an impossible task. Again, think about paid search – if someone asked you how much a click was worth on Google, your answer would have to be “it depends.” We know that some clicks are probably only worth a few pennies and others – a famous example would be “mesothelioma attorney” – can exceed $50 a click.

So while it is impossible to state in absolute terms that one form of media is more valuable than another, I would strongly argue that the pecking order of value for most businesses is as follows:
1. Email newsletter subscriber
2. Facebook fan
3. Twitter follower

Think of your own online behavior. How many email newsletters do you subscribe to? According to a study by ExactTarget, the average American gets 12 commercial emails a day. MailChimp reported the average open rate for ecommerce emails is almost 15%. Translation: consumers don’t subscribe to many email newsletters and those that they do subscribe to they tend to read.

Now consider a Facebook fan page. Facebook makes it really easy to sign up for a fan page – I suspect that sometimes people sign up without really knowing they are doing so. If you are active on Facebook, you might have hundreds of friends and pages posting onto your wall. Of course, no one has time to really read every post to their wall, and if you only log-in once or twice a day, you are likely to miss many posts. Add to this Facebook’s “EdgeRank”, which will actually hide posts that you would likely not click on anyways, and there’s a good chance that many so-called fans will rarely if ever really see a message from a company. A recent study suggested that Justin Beiber’s fan page had the highest percentage of “active fans” – i.e. fans that do anything beyond simply becoming a fan – at a whopping 2.8%.

Has Converse sold 15 million additional pairs of shoes to their 15 million fans? Have they even sold 10,000 shoes to these fans? I tend to doubt it. Assuming that Converse is “best of breed” and has a 2.8% active fan number, their 15 million fanbase is really only around 450,000 (and likely much lower). Turns out it’s easy to sign up for a fan page and even easier to ignore subsequent messages from that fan page.

And then we come to Twitter. I allegedly have 671 people following me (@rodnitzky) on Twitter. And yet, whenever I tweet an update, only 4-5 people respond to my tweet or re-tweet it. It’s likely that of my 671 followers, a good 600 of them are followers in name-only – they have a 3rd party Twitter app that only displays a small percentage of their followed tweets, and they have really followed me to get me to follow them back. Indeed, the sheer volume of tweets makes such a 3rd party tool mandatory. As a result, the number of followers you have is actually somewhat irrelevant – what’s more relevant is the number of people who actually read your tweet and the “clout” of your retweeters. Again, like Facebook, it’s very easy to follow someone on Twitter but to never actually engage with them, which makes this a meaningless metric.

If you’re not already convinced that email is far more powerful than Facebook or Twitter, just look at how financial markets are valuing emails, fans, and followers. Groupon – which really is just a giant email newsletter – has a value is somewhere around $25B and has around 40 million subscribers – that puts the value of a subscriber at about $625. Facebook has 600 million users and a value of around $70 billion – that translates to $116.7 per user. Finally, Twitter has 175 million accounts (the number of actual users may be less) and has a value of around $4 billion – that’s about $22.8 per user.

All of this is not to say that you shouldn’t pursue a Facebook or Twitter strategy as part of your online marketing investment. Social media will continue to grow in importance, it will evolve, and marketing best practices will gradually be established. In the meantime, however, invest wisely and try to understand what marketing channels really drive ROI for your business. My guess: ‘old school’ online marketing channels like SEM and email marketing may not be as sexy as a cool Facebook fan page, but for most businesses, they are still the best way to grow revenue and profit. Fans and followers are hip, but hipness won’t pay your electricity bill.

David Rodnitzky is CEO of PPC Associates, an SEM agency in San Mateo, California. If you are currently spending $25,000 or more a month on SEM, contact David at david@ppcassociates.com to learn how his agency can optimize your SEM campaigns.

Often in sports they say it’s not about whether you win or lose its how you played the game.

If you have ever been part of a sports team, you know that the coach is your motivator, cheerleader, mentor and teacher.  The coach will push you to outperform opponents.

Why does the coach do this?  Because the team has a goal to reach – usually a winning season, and the possibility of making it to the playoffs or winning a championship.

The coach has their goal in mind and it is their job to take all their players, leverage their strengths, create synergy and provide direction (focus) so that this team can outperform their competition.  This is also known as strategy – and one coach in particular has demonstrated this time and again: Phil Jackson.

Now let’s take this idea and apply it to business.  In business, you typically have a goal such as to increase revenue, decrease expenses, gain market share or maximize stock price.

If we break a business into component parts and look at the aspect of marketing, your goal(s) can include maximizing marketing ROI, increasing branding awareness, driving engagement and or generating qualified leads.

Your marketing team needs to run like a sports team.  All too often, I see where teams cannot focus on their end goal.  They seem to go around and around without any score keeping or measuring results.  And in this market, focus is something you cannot ignore.

Let’s continue to use basketball as an example.  When your team is practicing, you need to focus on strategies that will result in increased scores and eventually wins.  How does a team do this?

First of all, they find out what their competitors excel in and either beat those qualities or better yet, exploit the natural strengths within their own team.  If the competitor in the same division does well with field goals, then your team might excel in assists, free throws percentages, rebounds and superior defense.

The role of a marketing team’s is also to develop strategies of reaching that end goal.  If your company’s goal is to generate more revenue at a sustainable rate by maximizing marketing ROI, you had better have a solid plan as well as a few back up plans in place.

The way to execute on the strategy with the end goal in mind is to communicate to your team what the overall goal is and where the focus needs to be maintained.  Communicating the roadmap and gathering buy-in from your team is necessary to earn their respect.

If your roadmap shows you need x-number of sales each month to achieve the long-term goal, how will you get there?  The solution would be to divvy up the work according to your team members’ passion.  If you have a good analytics “player”, have them do the monthly reporting and measure campaign response rates.  If you have a good creative person, have them spearhead campaigns, coming up with the catchiest ads or offers.

In sports as in business, there will often be a team member who is seemingly not in tune with the team dynamic. I am thinking specifically of the NBA’s Dennis Rodman.  Most coaches would have dismissed him because he seemed a bit of a renegade; however, Phil Jackson, saw his strengths and pushed Rodman to be one of the best rebounders in the League by using mind game techniques.

So how are sports and marketing alike?  Businesses cannot be its own worst enemy through internal lack of communication, politics or bringing personal values or beliefs to the workplace and without solid strategies.  Good leaders think like coaches.  They take the players they have recruited, develop, mentor and lead them to victory.  Don’t you think marketing should be done the same way?

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Deepak Gupta is serving as the VP of Marketing for Help My Resume, a Florida-based non-profit and is the Founder of California-based Marketing By Deepak Consulting Group. Marketing By Deepak Consulting Group partners with clients and successfully converts their marketing efforts into qualified leads.

To be successful in Lead Generation, a good Marketer has to embrace, align and harmonize all the elements involved.  Together, these form the equation:

Lead Generation = (Branding + SEO + Social Media + Traditional Marketing + Customer Svc + PR + Mobile Marketing + Landing Pages)

Let’s examine each element briefly –

Branding: According to Brand Strategist, Richard Harmer, “Brands build loyal customers by consistently meeting their needs . . . it is like a reputation or gives one a certain feel or charisma that is not substitutable.”

SEO: Search Engine Optimization is simply being in the right place and time when your customer is on the prowl for your service or product.  And if you are there to help them right when they need it with a strong online presence – they will be more likely to purchase from you.

Social Media: Relationships are everything and the same can be said about developing relationships with consumers.  For instance, I believe companies should use Twitter as a customer service channel.

Traditional Marketing: There are consumers who still watch TV on a TV, see billboards on the freeway, receive direct mail and even read paper periodicals.  The only drawback to targeting this demographic is traditional advertising can be expensive and requires detailed ROI analysis.

Customer Service: Every time you lose a customer, it costs 5 – 6 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain or up-sell your existing ones. Use sales and marketing to increase your base and customer service to ensure retention.

PR: Networking Guru Hank Blank, says “Last year I sent out four press releases on Business Wire about some of my marketing engagements, speaking events, and thought leadership.  Why?  Because they help my organic SEO dramatically and provide validation material for pitching new business. And I know the value of being above the crowd.”

Mobile Marketing: Projections suggest that phone- and tablet-based Internet access will continue to increase.  Therefore, this is a mandatory channel for the savvy marketer.

Landing Pages: Many times, I have seen an ad, clicked and then was directed to a page that has nothing to do with the product/service I looked for.  Mary O’Brien admonishes marketers not to build a “bridge to nowhere.”

Lead Generation: These elements need to constantly feed each other as one integrated strategy – an IMC (Integrated Marketing Communications) plan –  to be effective.  Consumers should be able to feel the harmony and consistency in their interaction with your company.

Completing the Sales Cycle by Nurturing your Leads

It takes times for an egg to fully develop and hatch.  Think of your lead generation as an incubator.  You need to nurture and make them feel comfortable about you!

In our current economic climate, companies need to innovate and not hesitate to use highly targeted marking techniques to invigorate your life’s blood: consumer relationships.  Using the “spray and pray” approach and expecting sales to be pulled out of a hat is unsustainable.

Terms like “SEO” and “social media” are being abused by charlatans.  For instance, garnering a large presence online is a great way to establish credibility; however, you need a long-term monetization plan.

Being involved in marketing means nothing unless you are paying attention to attracting self-qualified leads to justify your marketing investment. Consumers are more savvy and selective than anytime in history.

Directing visitors to interactive landing pages and offering free whitepapers, e-books or special offers for commodities is the smart way to work in a lengthy sales cycle and consumer driven market and address the consumer’s question “What’s in it for me?”

Why the Quick Fix won’t work

Many companies still want the quick fix. Using dating as a metaphor, they liken being online for a short time to going to the singles bar. Business isn’t built from one night encounters but by fostering relationships.  Provide people with added value; closing the sale will follow.

For instance, some companies will try AdWords for a week, not get immediate gratification and move on.  Like a one night stand, lead generation doesn’t work like that and requires nurturing.  You have to be seen repeatedly, but with an appropriate frequency.

That is how your awareness spreads and your reputation grows.  When humans get to know you, you earn their trust and they become more engaged. You earn respect through demonstrating thought leadership.

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Deepak Gupta is serving as the VP of Marketing for Help My Resume, a Florida-based non-profit and is the Founder of California-based Marketing By Deepak Consulting Group. Marketing By Deepak Consulting Group partners with clients and successfully converts their marketing efforts into qualified leads.

An industry best practice for structuring a paid search campaign is the implementation of highly targeted and relevant ad groups. This is a part of the ‘before the click’ process that can easily be controlled and maintained. If this is not happening you have bigger issues than what the rest of this discussion is about. That being said, separated out into its own stop along the entire value stream, the paid search campaign is a relatively easy thing to manage and manage well. However, as we will see, the paid search campaign is in the middle of the value stream and can only sustain long lasting success if the upstream and downstream processes are completely aligned to serve the customer with the best user experience.

Upstream From the Paid Search Campaign

Before a paid search campaign can take form and become effective a search team needs to have certain basic information from the client who is further upstream in the process than the paid search team is. The following are key points about how to be most effective and what to avoid further upstream from paid search.

1. Goals and KeyPerformance Indicator’s (KPI’s) - To begin, clients should have a good idea as to why they are getting into the paid search game or how they’d like to grow their current paid search program. Clients should know the goals they want to achieve, their KPI’s, and their tolerance/risk for testing in order to learn. Paid search experts can help set expectations and guide clients in understanding what the potential may be for reaching certain goals, however, the initial goal setting should come from further upstream. Since both parties are working toward the same end results, ideally these are collaborative goals agreed upon by the expanded team before implementation or optimization happens.

2. Messaging Information- If the paid search program has already been implemented or is in the process of being developed, one of the most critical components of a paid search campaign is the text ad. And it’s just not the relevance of the text ad for Quality Score or how targeted it is, but more so in what the text ad messaging offers. Is there a generic call to action or is there some amazing discount or benefit that only your client can offer potential customers?

In some cases differentiated messaging can be found on a client website that can be worked into the ad creative copy. In many cases, on large e-commerce sites where there are hundreds of vendors and thousands of products, hunting and pecking for sales, discounts, and offers is not an efficient use of time. These offers, sales, and discounts should be made available to the paid search team in the form of a merchandising calendar so pro-active planning can occur.

3. Internal Communication- At times there are internal communication issues outside the paid search team that occur farther upstream that can have a significant negative impact on the success of paid search. Whether it’s an in-house paid search team or an agency there can be multiple layers of people and departments involved. If those parties farther upstream fail to communicate effectively, the lack of communication can trickle farther downstream and limit the effectiveness of the paid search team. This not only adds stress to the relationship between the paid search team and the departments farther upstream, but in effect, when the lack of communication and alignment reaches the paid search team and they are left to work with limited information this will have a negative impact on potential customers – the people you are trying to convert.

The impact of upstream goals, information or lack of information can vary but can mostly be managed to a certain level of success. If upstream processes are not fully aligned with everyone involved, the sustainability of long term growth may be at risk.

Downstream From the Paid Search Campaign

As part of the development, implementation, and continuous improvement of a paid search initiative, there are a couple of ‘post-click’ components that occur on the website that have an even greater significance on the success and growth of the account than those farther upstream in the process.

1. Does the Website Work/Are the Landing Pages Valid – This downstream process is the most critical in the mix because this one comes closest to customers you are trying to convert. First and foremost your website should work 100% of the time. Beyond that it should be user friendly providing the best experience possible for customers. Once customers have decided that your paid search ad matches closest with what they want to buy or it provides a solution to their questions, you are on the way to providing a high level of satisfaction for customers.

Not only should the website work and that its usability and navigation be at its prime, but the landing pages selected must be functioning and relevant. In reference to the large paid search program above, if you tag keywords and/or ad creatives with destination URLs it is critical to have open communication (from farther upstream) as to when those URLs change due to inventory levels or other website structure changes. If the landing page has been updated or the product no longer exists and there is not a redirect in place until the paid search URL can be updated, customers landing on error pages or some other random page is never a good thing. This not only impacts customers’ experiences, but also can have Quality Score implications.

2. Proper Implementation of Web Analytics Tracking & Tags – We all know paid search and all other online marketing channels are usually inaccurate within an acceptable range. That’s just the nature of this industry. For some reason website analytics tagging is the search industries bane of existence and inevitably problems occur when web analytics site tagging is not implemented correctly the first time. The other problem is when URL tagging parameters are not used correctly and used as a temporary work-around to fix a problem farther upstream instead of fixing the root cause of the problem. These types of downstream problems create additional challenges in reporting and decision making farther upstream in the process.

Regardless of upstream or downstream from paid search, the entire value stream should be considered as a total system.  When all of these processes are aligned there is a greater opportunity for success of the paid search account. The alignment of the entire value stream also builds trust between all those involved creating a more productive team for long term sustainability.

Let us know what you think — fee free to add your comments, ideas… below!

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Matt LeVeque is the Founder & President of SEM Science Consulting, LLC and Senior Member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ).

Google AdWords can have numerous benefits if planned, executed, and monitored properly. There are also pitfalls to be avoided. This article will cover important things to avoid as well as effective steps for implementing an effective AdWords campaign.

Step 1: Define attainable goals

A team seeking to maximize the use of AdWords will identify and articulate realistic goals, which might include:

1)    Increasing donation volume

2)    Recruiting more volunteers

3)    Raising brand awareness

Step 2: Appeal to the relevant geographic and/or demographic targets.

An effective campaign should speak to a defined market. For tracking purposes, duplicating or moving around keywords once “up and running” should be avoided. A feature called Ad Scheduler can be set up using either Accelerated or Standard Delivery (evenly delivered ads throughout the day).

Step 3: Develop tightly-themed Ad Groups

The more relevant the ad text, the higher the CTR (click through rate), the Quality Score and the Page Rank that will be achieved. As for Ad Text Optimization, place catchy calls to action and inter- capitalize your display URL.  For instance, instead of having www.marketingbydeepak.com show http://www.marketingbydeepak.com/.  In addition, rotate various ads and you can track individual performance.

Step 4: Research keywords

This requires serious consideration; an organization can benefit from using the Google Suggest Tool to find relevant keywords.  Trying to think like the target demographic may result in coming up with keywords from the User’s perspective.  Be sure to look at all match types – broad, phrase and exact.

Step 5: Landing Page Optimization.

Most people have shared the frustrating experience of clicking on an ad only to be led to page that has nothing to do with the product/service searched for.  There are numerous resources available on Landing Page Designs online.

The bottom line is that the marketer can have great goals, campaigns, ad groups and keywords; however, if these cannot be converted to close the sale, the effort has been fruitless.

AdWords Campaign Cautions and Pitfalls
Earlier, it was mentioned that there are pitfalls to be avoided. Chief among these is: Google AdWords cannot be done alone.  AdWords is only one aspect of Social Media, which is a marketing tactic.  Any business or organization seeking to leverage the social media tools, at a minimum, will establish a presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook and show up in organic search results in addition to running AdWords.

Statistics indicate that, when people do searches, 75% of the time they click on the organic content found within the search engine results page (SERP).  Only 25% click what they see on the sponsored links section.   Users tend to trust the organic content more because of the independent review.  An organization that shows up in both areas has a great deal in its favor!

Branding should not be underestimated.  An organization that is well-branded and enjoys good press is more likely to perform better than an up-and-comer.

Remember to use Keyword Research, the Google Suggestion Tool, and to brainstorm with your Team or others to generate novel ideas.  Even funny-sounding search terms can yield surprising results!

Campaigns that are up and running can benefit from the reporting features and Google Analytics to monitor and track campaign performance.  Every so often, adjust a campaign by eliminating low performers, refining keywords, and ads themselves.  Repeat this process often.

As with other aspects of your ad campaign, budget how much to spend on AdWords.  Calculate enough allowance for your industry.  Competitors may jump in and bid up the price for keywords.  Determine a realistic ROI. Team members should take the time to read your reports and work with AdWords as seriously as they would a direct mail campaign.

What are the challenges you face with your AdWords campaigns? Please add your comments below.

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Deepak Gupta is VP of Marketing for Help My Resume, a Florida-based non-profit and is the Principal of Marketing By Deepak Consulting Group. Prior to jumping into the inbound marketing world, Deepak worked in database marketing and analytics where he developed marketing initiatives for brands like the Auto Club, State Farm, UPS, Hooked On Phonics, Comcast, AT&T, World Wrestling Entertainment, ESPN, Nickelodeon and other related brands.

The countdown to Christmas is on and the holiday shopping season is now in full swing, with Cyber Monday just barely in the rear view mirror. The good news is that there is still a lot that can be done to take advantage of the increase in consumer spending this month, whether you started planning in July or are just now thinking about how to grow sales this holiday. Here are 5 tips and tricks that any Pay Per Click (PPC) advertiser should consider when maximizing AdWords for the holiday sales rush.

1.       Budget Wisely. For many online retailers, traffic and sales volume can go through the roof come holiday time. This is because more people are searching and more of those searchers have the intent to buy. Don’t let your ‘regular’ budgets limit your profits. If you are obtaining or exceeding your ROI goals, there is no reason to keep your campaign budgets capped! This is one of the easiest ways to increase your PPC profits this time of year.  Review your campaign budgets and ROI and where it makes financial sense increase those daily campaign budgets to levels that ensure your ads aren’t missing out on impressions.

 In AdWords, you can look to the metric called “Lost IS (budget)” (“IS” stands for “Impression Share”) to tell you how much traffic you might be missing out on. In the AdWords interface, edit the columns of data you are viewing and select this metric. If your “Lost IS (budget)” is 25%, then that means that you could be receiving 25% more impressions if your budgets were 25% higher.

2.       Plan Your Promotions, Have Ads at the Ready. Make the management of your holiday PPC efforts effortless – by having all of your promotions laid out for the holiday season, you can also ensure that you have PPC ads ready to support those promotions. By creating ads ahead of time and including the ads in your campaigns on “Paused” status before the promotion is live you allow time for the ads to be approved by editorial and limit the risk of any lack of visibility when your promotion goes live. I generally recommend adding new ads a week in advance just to be sure there aren’t any editorial issues. Then when it comes time to promote your sale or special offer all you have to do is switch your old ads off and flip your new ads on.

 3.       Know Your Competitor’s Deals. Holiday shoppers are a fickle bunch – always looking for the best deal. This is why it’s so critical to make sure your promotions are just as attractive as your competitors. Be sure to consider the total price of the transaction, including shipping. A comparable “30% off regular price” will not be as enticing if your standard shipping is $10 and your competitor is offering reduced or free shipping on top of the 30% off price tag. Monitor your competitor’s ads and websites and have the flexibility to adjust your promotions accordingly.

 4.       Leverage Sitelinks. Many retailers have a lot of different promotions, offers and sales taking place this time of year – and with only a very limited amount of space in the typical PPC ad, it can be difficult or impossible to make sure searchers are fully informed. The AdWords ad extension called “Sitelinks” can add up to 140 additional extra characters to your text ad space. Add up to ten Sitelinks per campaign that call out, for example, your Free Shipping offer, Clearance Sale, New Products, lowered prices on specific products in your inventory, or Gift Guides. AdWords will display up to four Sitelinks in an ad at a time. Sitelinks will not only help to make your promotions visible, but your ads themselves are often more visible and can generate high click-through-rates.

 In this example, Moonstruck Chocolates is using Sitelinks to merchandise a variety of holiday-related product offerings. A range of price-points are included in order to speak to a range of shopper’s budgets.

5.       Plan for Promotions After December 25^th. This is something that retailers often forget about – some of the biggest shopping days of the year are actually AFTER Christmas. This is driven by gifts that shoppers received such as gift cards, cash or products such as a Wii that will require the purchase of additional games and accessories. Post-Christmas shopping is also driven by deal-seekers heading out in droves to take advantage of all of the clearance sales that traditionally take place at this time. Be sure to promote your post-holiday sales in PPC; don’t just revert to your ‘regular’ ad messaging. Make your website’s Clearance or Sale section extra prominent, but be sure to keep tabs on inventory – if pickings are slim, then users can get frustrated and leave the site without making a purchase.

Even though the holiday shopping season is quickly counting down, PPC advertisers still have time to grow sales and profits. Make it a happy holiday for your PPC campaigns by implementing any or all of these five easy tips.

Let us know what is working or not for your holiday AdWords campaigns. Feel free to comment!

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Leisa Hall is an Account Director at Anvil Media, Inc. – a search engine marketing agency in Portland, Oregon. Leisa directs Search Engine Marketing strategy primarily for B2C clients ranging in size from start-up to Fortune 500.

When creating a pay per click campaign, marketers commonly focus on things like keywords, match types, cost per click bids, organizing the campaign into ad groups, target cost per acquisition, and other mechanics of PPC campaigns. But in concentrating on the setup and execution of their pay per click campaigns, too many marketers don’t spend enough time thinking about their PPC landing pages – some don’t even setup customized landing pages at all!

So here are the top landing page mistakes to avoid when creating pages for your pay per click campaigns:

1) Not having a landing page. I know I already mentioned this, but this is the single biggest mistake you can make. Many marketers who are first getting into PPC advertising think it’s adequate to drive traffic to their website. Get people to your home page, and they’ll know what to do, right?

Wrong. When people are typing a search into Google, Bing, or another search engine, they are looking for an immediate answer to a specific query. If they click on your ad, they’re expecting a question to the answer they asked – now. They’re not going to dig through your website to find what they’re looking for. Customized landing pages answer the question the searcher was asking quickly and directly.

2) Not having CUSTOMIZED landing pages. If you’re running a large pay per click campaign or multiple PPC campaigns, chances are you are covering a multitude of keywords and have numerous ads. If possible and appropriate, you should be setting up customized landing pages with different offers that are aligned with the ads and keywords used in individual ad groups and campaigns.

This can help improve your quality scores for Google AdWords, which, in turn, can help bring down your cost per click. By ensuring your landing page offer and wording are closely aligned with your ads, you should also improve your conversion rate.

3) Not having a conversion goal. Too many marketers do setup landing pages, but fail to setup a conversion goal. What is a conversion? Simply put, a conversion is when a visitor to your landing page takes the action you want them to take.

This could be downloading an ebook or white paper, signing up for a newsletter, registering for a webinar, and so on. If there isn’t an action you’re trying to get visitors to take, why are you paying to get them to your website? Tracking conversions lets you know how effective your PPC campaigns are. Make sure you define what your conversion is and setup conversion code on your landing pages to track when visitors complete your defined goal.

4) Not tracking return on investment. While establishing a dollar value for conversions can sometimes seem arbitrary, doing so can help you manage your PPC campaigns and determine whether or not they are cost effective. While the dollar value of some conversions might be easy to calculate (buying a product, registering for a paid webinar), others can be more difficult (signing up for a newsletter or downloading a free white paper).

Do your best to realistically calculate the value of your conversions and use this to compute ROI on pay per click campaigns.

5) Not testing, testing, testing. Another major mistake many online marketers make is failing to constantly test and improve the effectiveness of their PPC campaigns. There are many landing page optimization tools out there to help you do this.

If you’re not continually testing and optimizing your landing pages, you’re letting potential customers get away and leaving money on the table. Testing different offers, landing page designs, copy, and images can help you improve the conversion rate on your pay per click campaigns.

Everybody has been new to Internet marketing at some point, but that doesn’t mean you have to repeat the same mistakes as everyone else. Instead, learn from the common pay per click landing page mistakes explained here.

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Jason Mikula works as a freelance search engine marketing and social media marketing consultant.  Jason has experience working with pay per click, search engine optimization, and email and web marketing.

Online marketing today is not quite what it used to be. Just a couple of years ago, the combination of SEO with PPC seemed to be the final word in serious online marketing. With Social Media gaining ground in recent years, more and more channels and communities are accessible to users where they prefer to ‘hang out.’

Users are researching blogsphere & community websites for checking out reviews of products they want to buy, find solutions to their problems, or just share their views on subjects that would interest most marketers in reaching out to them. Most users feel that peer groups tend to offer a more unbiased and genuine reviews about products.

Facebook’s traffic alone is inching close to Google’s traffic and is growing at a much faster rate than Google’s traffic. Twitter’s traffic is in the vicinity of Yahoo’s & Bing’s traffic put together. Smart marketers need to put their content in front of these potential buyers, right where they hang out.

The increase of Social Media usage, as against traditional marketing channels like SEO & PPC, is also throwing up several uneasy questions –

• Is SEO losing its effectiveness, becoming obsolete or already dead?
• Will PPC become more expensive? Will it continue to serve its original purpose?
• Will companies divert part of their PPC budgets into SEO & Social Media Marketing?
• Is Social Media just a fad? Can Social Media really serve as a serious marketing vehicle? Should one have a defined and serious Social Media Marketing strategy?
• Will Social Media continue to grow at the same pace or is it reaching its saturation?
• What will happen if search engines like Google make more radical changes to their algorithms?
• Should one have a common or a complimentary marketing message across SEO, PPC & Social Media?
• How should SEO, PPC and SMM dovetail into your online marketing strategy? What role should each play? What kind of performance can one expect from each of these marketing vehicles?
• How does one decide how much budget one should allocate to each media?

Today’s marketers need to take a fresh look at their marketing strategies when they plan their media mix of SEO, PPC, Social Media and other vehicles to deliver their marketing message. Conventional promotion techniques and approaches need to be innovated to get powerful results and fight competition.

One can no longer think of SEO, PPC, and Social Media Marketing in isolation. You need to have a holistic approach in planning the media mix, keeping in mind the power as well as limitations of each media. The role of each media should be deployed in such a way that they fill gaps of the other. One needs to use each medium for what it is best suited to individually accomplish, given its distinct advantages. Ideally, SEO, PPC, and Social Media should together serve your common business goals.

Online Marketing Objectives

Before you can go about planning how each marketing medium should be used, it is important to first outline your specific short-term & long-term marketing objectives. Getting clarity on your marketing objectives is key to setting a roadmap for your resource deployment and budget allocation to SEO, PPC and Social Media. SEO usually works well to serve your long-term objectives, while PPC and Social Media Marketing can be used to achieve both short-term and long term marketing objectives.

For example, SEO can be deployed to steadily build website traffic for your main key phrases but may require considerable time and resources to get good results. However, SEO can achieve quicker results for your long-tail keywords with minimal efforts. It is also cost effective to promote ‘non-commercial’ product-relevant keywords, which may not boost instant sales on your website, but is good to get potential buyers interested in your product and may eventually convert into sales.

PPC is ideal for promoting special offers, seasonal sales, geo-targeting, new product launches, direct website sales, lead generation, website page content A|B split testing and getting traffic for your ‘head’ or competitive keyword phrases that result in conversions. Essentially, it is best to invest in PPC where time is of essence and the results can be commercially measurable.

Social media promotion can play an effective role in building customer relationships, interactivity, providing customer support services at reduced cost, get direct customer feedback on your products, your services and your website. It allows you to build communities, positively influence existing communities and steer a positive peer review of your products.  Social media also works well in affiliate development, engaging new marketing partners, hiring key people, channel development, brand image building, creating brand visibility, online reputation management, and lead the users to useful online resources, information and reference material on your website.

Of the three stages of the buying process –

a) research stage where the customer is researching on the possible products or solutions

b) when the buyer firms up his buying decision and

c) when he is ready to make the purchase

- SEO and Social media can work cheaper to serve the first two stages, while PPC can serve as a ‘go-getter’ to grab the buyer in the third stage.

In this multi-part article, I shall evaluate several of the aspects listed above. We will try to understand the unique advantages of SEO, PPC and Social Media Marketing and how each of these marketing vehicles can work in coordination to deliver maximum mileage for your marketing dollar. A well planned marketing strategy based on clearly laid out objectives not only enables you to measure the success of your campaign but also secures your investment for a long term and helps you remain ahead of the competition.

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Atul Gupta is the Co-Founder & CEO of RedAlkemi.com, a company specializing in Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing. Atul is a thought-leader in Online Marketing industry and has been working in this field since 1996. His company has helped over a thousand clients succeed in their online businesses. Atul is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and has published several articles about SEM industry.

Any single-metric-based approach is dangerous, but some are more deadly than others, especially in some contexts.

When you’re doing Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing as an Affiliate Marketer, you want to have a clear understanding of how the Earnings Per Click (EPC) is being calculated. EPC is a metric that is being widely used by affiliate programs and affiliate networks. In fact, while there is no across-the-industry uniformity on displaying other Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of affiliate programs, EPC is one of very few metrics that is being disclosed to you — even before you join an affiliate program — by most affiliate networks out there.

Here’s an example of how this looks on Commission Junction:

While on the surface, EPC looks like a great “benchmark” metric, but it can be quite dangerous when taken at face value. There are two things PPC marketers shouldn’t do with the EPC data:

1) Do Not Understand EPC Literally

“While  this  abbreviation  was  originally  coined  to  stand  for an affiliate program’s average affiliate’s EPC, you want to be 100% clear on how exactly it’s being calculated. In fact, in the vast majority of cases EPC now means Earnings Per 100 Clicks, and not per single click. The formula used for calculating EPC in the majority of affiliate marketing contexts is: EPC = Profit ÷ Clicks × 100. Therefore, in the above screenshot AT&T affiliate program’s 3-month EPC, which is $88.65, should be read as: “$88.65 is what an average affiliate earns through the AT&T’s program on every 100 visitors sent to them”.

But wait! That’s not the only thing you want to understand about EPC! Point #2 is even more important:

2) Do Not Budget Your PPC Campaign(s) Based on EPC

When setting your PPC bids, you have to be especially careful with how you use the EPC data. One of the costliest mistakes is to merely divide the EPC figure by 100, and budget your marketing campaign setting the result of this basic arithmetic operation as the amount you’re willing to pay per click/visitor.

Let’s take this health insurance affiliate program as an example. Below is the information you will see on it (prior to joining it):

The program’s 3-months’ EPC is $16.56. Dividing this number by 100, we will arrive at an average affiliate earning of $0.16-$0.17 per click.

Here’s the part you do not see (top 10 affiliates’ EPC in the program):

Do you see how different the amounts are in every case? They range from $5.45 to $292.24 in earnings per 100 clicks, but you don’t know this when you’re looking at the average; and the individual affiliate’s EPC data is only available to the merchant.

There are also other important factors that you do not know (about the program, and affiliates in the program), but the above example illustrates the point well.

Averages are good to know, but always tricky, and should be treated as such. Never base your decision on any single metric, regardless of the context, and especially if this metric is an average.

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Geno Prussakov is the Founder of AMNavigator.com, a graduate of the University of Cambridge, author of “A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing” (2007), “Online Shopping Through Consumers’ Eyes” (2008), contributor to “Internet Marketing from the Real Experts” (2010), international speaker, and regular contributor to a number of industry’s publications. He is an acclaimed expert in affiliate marketing and an award-winning affiliate manager. Feel free to contact him directly with any questions on affiliate management.

Think about the hot-button keywords for online businesses. Many will say “need traffic”. Others say “more leads”, “improve rankings” or “need new website.” I say conversions, i.e. the result that is recorded after the visitor performs an event and actions preceding that. This is what smart marketers work on.

Recently, I spoke to the owner of an online health-care business. He needed to ‘improve’ his website with a new look. After a brief discussion, he shifted his thinking. He didn’t need a prettier site, but rather – to focus on tracking, measuring and tuning the traffic, conversion and funnel experience that the visitor had with his website.

Your website – a performance machine.

To build a better performing website – you must build trust, authority – both in the users and search engines’ eyes. And, it helps if you create compelling, actionable pages that convert.

However, this article is not about detailed conversion strategies, per se. It’s about building website content with which users engage. And, it is about creating an experience for the visitor that compels action, referrals and admiration (fans) for your business.

I have used these strategies to more than triple traffic in a short period of time using content marketing and SEO friendly copy. The bounce rate moved from approx. 90% to about 22% in the same period, as well as doubling the lead count, and increasing time on site to an average of 9 minutes.

Quality content – how to create it.

What is the word that you hear most often at SEO conferences? Answer: Links. It makes sense, since that’s at the heart of search engine’s ranking algorithm, and in specific, Google. It is the power of “votes” for your website (pages, actually) from others across the Internet. You get the benefit (depending on the link attribution) of ‘link juice’, overall visibility and, if done right – more web traffic.

To develop quality content, several criterions exist. One important aspect is about matching your content to your audience.

You can do this by collecting information for topics from:

• Keyword research (Google Keyword Tool, Wordtracker.com, Keyworddiscovery.com)
• Competitive research (Search engines, spyfu.com, semrush.com)
• Links research (OpensiteExplorer.org)
• Popularity research (Google trends, digg.com, amazon.com, shopping.com, search.twitter.com)

Once you have data from this research, you’ll be able to build the articles and a content calendar for your website. You’ll have a never ending stream of ideas from which to build. You can even outsource this research if you don’t have time. Check http://www.elance.com/ to start. (Footnote: I recommend using a blog – WordPress – to facilitate the organization and output of this new, steady content. Soon, I’m launching a new search-engine friendly WordPress system with built in content marketing solutions. Feel free to check http://www.simplewebsitepress.com/ for more information).

Visitors and links attraction.

Now that you have your content factory constructed, users should find you as you deploy and get a few links. However, you must expand your strategy to capture a broader net. These next steps will help your content get wings, and will provide much needed links for the authority building.

While some would say, start with a PPC campaign, find out what works first – and then apply wider strategies later, I say you can expand using social media with very little effort and cost too. Reaching out to other bloggers in your space will be important, don’t forget that. Here’s what to do:

Step 1: Convert your text into video format. Upload to Youtube. Use Tubemogul for wider syndication. Use keywords in Titles, URLs early in descriptions, add full text there also.

Step 2: Build an audio version. Audacity.com is free to record if you do it yourself. Or, use transcription services (also elance.com). I hear good things about castingwords.com. Distribute to podcasting / voice directories. Try itunes.com.

Step 3: Create a list of places to “tweet” and distribute the (links) multiple formats of content into the social media sphere – start with Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin. (Footnote: don’t spam, join the social communities, and become a listener first). Include rich media into press releases. Try a social media release with prweb.com.

These tactics work, and Google loves multi-media and video. It’s easier to get listed in organic (universal search) results with video.

Develop a process for yourself, and keep doing it consistently. I spend most of my time in research and RSS feeds, and content is built in 10-20 minutes on average.

Provide something of immediate value, offer downloads and give products (when you can) away for free. Don’t forget to build out a great relationship via your follow-up email marketing (did you get their name & email?). Learn their behaviors from that list over time. Send information they care about, and drive them back to your money site.

Let us know how you are creating an experience to compel visitor actions, referrals and admiration (fans) for your business. Feel free to comment!

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Jon Rognerud is the SEO columnist, blogger at Entrepreneur Magazine, author of the “Ultimate Guide to Search Engine Optimization” (Entrepreneur Press/McGraw-Hill) and writes on his own blog at http://www.jonrognerud.com. Visit now to get more cool information on internet marketing, SEO, PPC, Social Media, content, traffic, lead strategies – and learning more about the human challenges of being an Entrepreneur. You are not alone.