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

Although Internet technology does not yet allow web pages to produce smells, there is a form of scent at work on websites. When someone clicks on a search result, paid or organic, and lands on a website, the site owner can reasonably assume this visitor has an interest in whatever was the subject of that search. Marketing guru and bestselling author Bryan Eisenberg describes this interest in terms of a scent trail. The visitor is following the scent of something that interests them. The site owner has an opportunity to exploit that interest by maintaining the scent trail.

A good landing page lets visitors to a website know that they have come to the right place. Given that aromas are beyond the limits of current technology, that knowledge is typically conveyed visually, using words and images that reflect the message that prompted the click that brought the visitor to the site. Clicking on a paid search ad that displays “15% Off All HP Printers” to people searching for HP printers should lead to a page where that same offer is clearly visible.

In my experience, conversion rates and other key metrics are consistently higher when scent is maintained by aligning page content with traffic acquisition campaigns. There are several ways to do this, including campaign-specific landing pages and micro-sites. Another approach is to enable all of your pages to display conditional content, which is content that varies based on what you know about the visitor, including what brought them to the page. This “universal landing page” approach is particularly valuable when social media sends traffic to your site.

Consider what happens to the scent trail if someone on a social network pastes a link to a product page on your site into a tweet or status update. The good news is that you are getting traffic that you didn’t have to pay for, and the scent trail is, to some degree, taking care of itself. The visitor’s interest in the product has landed them on the product page. But now it’s up to you to amplify the scent, capture the interest, and convert it. If you have a system in place to display conditional content on all your site’s pages–effectively giving any page the potential to act like a landing page–there are numerous conversion strategies that can prove effective; here are four of them:

1. Make them welcome: Use what you know about the visitor to make them feel special, starting with whether they’re a new or returning visitor. New visitors are best met with assurances that your site is the best place to purchase the item in which interest has been expressed. Also highlight information about logistics such as shipping options and return policies. Returning visitors require less information and assurance so use that space to welcome them back, possibly leveraging CRM data about past browsing and purchasing behavior.

2. Make them feel at home: Many visitors respond positively to local content, which you can derive from their physical location as determined by IP address look-up. One pet food website produced a big jump in orders simply by displaying location-specific messaging such that a visitor from Seattle saw: “Seattle’s best source for pet food at discount prices.”

3. Engage them: When someone clicks through to your site from a tweet or status update, you have a chance to engage them by leveraging their interest in the subject of the link. Show them links to similar or related items. Consider a lightbox to ask for their email address with a hook such as: “Want up-to-the-minute news and offers on great products like this? Sign up for our free newsletter.

4. Accommodate them: Your web server knows a lot about the devices people are using to visit your site. If the server detects a widescreen display consider a fly-out box on the right of the page to deliver more above-the-fold information. If the visitor is using a smartphone adjust content accordingly.

One reason for the marketing buzz around social media is the very scenario discussed here: Some number of people are arriving at websites from social media links that cost nothing, attracted by the scent of something that interests them, and some percentage of those people make purchases. Applied with the right amount of marketing flair the four strategies I have described can substantially increase the probability that the social media visitor is converted into a website customer.

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A prolific blogger and content marketing pioneer, Stephen Cobb has enabled several hi-tech startups to achieve successful outcomes by educating the marketing for their technologies. Stephen is currently an Evangelist at Monetate, the Philadelphia-based marketing optimization company. He resides in Upstate New York.

Late last year, Dave Chaffey (of Smart Insights) interviewed Ben Jesson and Karl Blanks of Conversion Rate Experts on the processes, tools and skills needed to improve conversion rates. Their interview is reprinted with their permission here:

What is Conversion rate optimisation?

Q1. We’re seeing a lot more companies working now on CRO. What is it? Is it more than landing page optimisation?

Yes, it should be. Landing page optimisation focuses on one page. We coined the term Conversion Rate Optimisation (“CRO”) in 2007 to describe the process of optimizing the business itself. It’s really commercial optimization

A proper job of CRO includes the review of the entire process from the initial lead-generation ad, all the way through to the post-sale follow-up. The real goal is to identify which parts of the sales funnel will yield the greatest wins with the least work.

That means it’s necessary to bring a lot of disciplines to the party, including understanding traffic sources, visitor psychology, and the company’s position in the marketplace, including its core strengths and weaknesses. On top of that there’s usability testing, copywriting, and web design factors to look at.

All these elements go into creating hypotheses for testing. We’re maniacal about testing, because we’ve seen too many businesses merely throw a series of “best practices” against the wall to see if anything sticks. Best practices should not be the answer to optimizing a website, but merely one starting point for formulating a test strategy.

Once we determine what truly works for a particular website, then we examine how our findings might be used in other media channels. For instance a better series of benefit statements might be transferrable to direct mail or email autoresponder campaigns—subject to testing in those media, of course.

The business case

Q2. How do you help companies persuade colleagues of the returns from CRO, the business case?

It’s easy; we explain that CRO allows companies to generate more revenue without spending more on advertising. It’s about getting a higher return from the existing ad spend.

Unlike certain industries like public relations, the entire foundation of CRO is based on data, measurement, and testing. You don’t need to present arguments when the data can do the talking for you. Once you measure the value of visitors, conversions, and sales, then it’s simple arithmetic to show how, say, a 10% boost in conversions would help the bottom line.

Here’s another powerful side-benefit: When you optimise your funnel and bring in more revenues, you then have earned a luxury: You get to decide whether to pocket those profits or plough them back into even more advertising, thus distancing yourself even further from your competitors. It’s a nice problem to have.

Identifying the biggest opportunities

Q3. What approaches do you use to decide which part of a site needs most urgent attention?

FORTUNE magazine called what we do “a combination of multivariate statistical analysis and good old-fashioned detective work” and that pretty well describes our approach.

It’s often very useful to map out your entire sales/conversion funnel and make sure it’s being comprehensively measured in whatever web analytics package you prefer.

Then you should look for the biggest drop-offs from one step to the next. We like to say that we look for the “blocked arteries” (that is, pages—or page elements—that get loads of visitors but are underperforming). How do you know if something is underperforming? Clues come from a range of feedback mechanisms: the analytics data, usability tests, surveys, customer support feedback … and, of course, gut feel. Of course, we have the advantage of having been engaged by companies on several continents and in many industries, so we have a good knowledgebase of what’s good and what’s bad. See our list of effective tactics and strategies.

What mistakes limit conversion?

Q4. Give some examples of the most common “conversion rate killers” you see.

Killer #1: Not split testing. Many people think they’re done if they take action to make changes to their site. In reality they’re only “done” when tests show that the changes in fact improved conversions. Installing a “best practice” magic button that another site swears by might actually lower conversions. Despite the popularity of video, Google once discovered through tests that video reduced conversions on one of its pages. You simply must test to find out.

Not long ago, multivariate testing software cost more than £5,000 per month. Now you can use Google Website Optimizer and other software packages for free, so there’s really no excuse. We created a tool, called Which Multivariate, which helps you to select the best software for multivariate testing.

Killer #2 is “meek tweaking”—in other words, making changes that are never likely to have a significant effect.

Killer #3 is asking for the sale on the first visit. It’s often a good idea to test the creation of a multi-step conversion funnel, in which you provide great value before you ask for the order. Comparison charts, forums, special reports, and email marketing are examples of elements that allow you to provide good information, ask for names, cultivate a relationship and thereby improve the chances of a sale.

We recently gave a talk on 15 Common Causes of Conversion Death

What are the latest approaches?

Q5. Are you seeing any innovative design techniques that are helping conversions?

Excellent design is a prerequisite for conversion, but the biggest breakthroughs tend to be the new tools and techniques for gathering insights into the visitor’s mindset.

For determining how visitors interact with a site we often use both Clicktale and CrazyEgg.

KISSInsights and Ethnio are both good for asking your visitors to give you immediate feedback on your site. GazeHawk enables you to conduct an eye-tracking study on your site for a tiny fraction of the traditional cost.

Many of your readers will already know about how wireframing is important in order to get agreement on functional aspects before you take the time to make a site look good. We like Balsamiq for that purpose. [Editor - I use that too - a great simple wireframing tool for consultants and agencies]

Finally, your readers may want to get our free newsletter to see what a million-dollar landing page looks like, along with a graphical analysis. We call it that because it generated over a million dollars for one of our clients.

If you want even more examples of what’s possible with conversion improvement, watch the video in the header of our website.

I run a growing search engine marketing agency, so you’d think that I’d spend heavily advertising my agency with PPC, right? In fact, I spend a total of $0/year on PPC for my own business. Partially this is because I don’t need to (I get business from existing clients and word-of-mouth), but it’s also because I don’t think PPC would work for my business. Simply put, I’m too expensive for the average PPC clicker.

As John Battelle aptly put it, search engines represent “the database of intentions.” When someone does a search, they are expressing their intent to do something. My agency charges a minimum of $2500/month for our services. With that in mind, how much do you think the typical searcher who types in “search engine marketing agency” or “AdWords help” or “PPC” into Google expects/can pay for SEM help? The vast majority of searchers are looking to pay at most a couple of hundred dollars a month for SEM consulting. And for most of these people, that’s what they should actually pay – they don’t need to advanced tactics that my agency offers, they simply need “blocking and tackling” – a properly set up campaign with a good list of keywords.

If I bought 1000 clicks a month on AdWords for my business, the odds are that 990 out of 1000 clicks would come from people looking for something other than what I am selling. That leaves me ten chances to convert a customer. If each click costs $2, I’m paying $200 per click for those ten qualified searchers.

There are, however, good reasons to advertise expensive products and services via PPC – if you do it right. First, if you have a product that makes you a huge amount of money for every sale, you might want to advertise it with PPC, even if most people aren’t looking for what you are selling. For example, let’s say you sell telephone service to large enterprises. A consumer might want to pay $30/month for home phone service, but if you sell your product to IBM, you might have a $10M annual contract. If 990 out of 1000 clicks are consumers, but the last ten are companies like IBM, even if you only convert one sale a year, the PPC campaign will pay for itself many times over!

Secondly, if you are slightly more expensive than competitors but have significant differentiation, you can also make PPC work. Let’s say that the average consumer phone service costs $30/month and comes with voicemail, call-waiting, and conference calling. Your service, however, costs $50/month but includes an after-hours call-answering service, a toll-free number, and superior sound quality. If you can convince consumers that it’s worth paying more for your product, you may still be able to make PPC work. Imagine an ad that said something like this: “The only home phone service with a toll-free number and sound quality approved by NASA!” With an ad like this, you are clearly telling consumers that not all phone service is the same, and that it may be worth paying more for quality.

In general then, PPC can work for selling expensive products and services, but make sure to follow these rules:

• If you aren’t the lowest priced product, differentiate yourself in your ad so that only people interested in quality will click your ads;
• Expect a lot of untargeted clicks and make sure to work hard to close the few targeted ones. This might mean having a very informative landing page, or for B2B, setting up a lead nurturing/lead qualification process to engage potential customers;
• Avoid generic keywords if possible. If you are selling Rolexes, avoid keywords like “telling time” or “watch” and instead focus on targeted words like “expensive watch” and “designer watches”;
• Add in lots of targeting. If you sell to businesses, exclude non-business hour day-parts. If you sell an expensive consumer product, add negative keywords like “cheap”, “free” and “ebay.” If you market to rich people, exclude lower-income geographies;
• Measure success over a long period of time. If your average sale is $50K, it’s OK to spend $1000 a month for six months and not get a sale, as long as you are seeing potential buyers move through your sales pipeline;

I still believe that PPC is best-suited for companies that position themselves as the “low-cost leader,” or the cheapest seller in a category. Follow the tips above, however, and you can still make your pricey offering work. Good luck!

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David Rodnitzky is Founder of PPC Associates, a leading SEM agency in San Francisco. To learn more about full service AdWords management from PPC Associates, contact David at david@ppcassociates.com.

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.

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.

Finding new customers is a critical objective for any business. No matter what kind of marketing a business uses to meet that objective, from business cards to web sites, success requires understanding a couple of marketing fundamentals for building an effective Search Marketing strategy.

Where are your customers?

Where do your customers look for information to help them make a purchase? If it’s a simple purchase, one with no big perceived risk, a phone book might be the only place a customer looks. If those are your customers, then your business needs a phone and a listed number. If you focus your marketing attention on giving your customers the best possible service by phone, you are on your way to successfully meeting their needs and winning their business.

For a more complex sale, there can be many touch points along the way from early consideration to final sale. Not only that, but each individual marketing medium can offer several different touch points during the course of a sale, with messaging tailored for different stages of the buying process, as well as the different people within the buying audience.

Do your customers read newspapers? Do they watch TV? Do they spend time on social networking sites, and which ones? In other words, where do they congregate and how can you be there with them?

The important thing to remember as a marketer is that you need to get the right message in front of the right person at the right time. To do that, you have to understand who your customers are, where they go for information, and what they do next.

How do they decide to buy?

Buyers commonly do research online to learn more about solutions, products and vendors, as well as find information on pricing, reviews from customers, instructional videos and more. Business-to-business purchases also routinely involve several people. You might think of them as categorized into three main types: doers, buyers, and bosses.

The “doers” are the people on the frontline, and they are often where the need for a purchase is first recognized. They are the people who will likely be working with your product or service on a regular basis, and as such their influence can be keenly felt at the beginning of a purchase cycle.

The “buyers” typically enter the purchase cycle a little later on. They have different needs than the “doers” who will be using the product. The buyer wants to know about pricing, guarantees, support, and the vendor’s credibility. In other words, their job is to mitigate the risk associated with a purchase and protect the company from making a costly error.

The third type of person that can be involved in a complex sale is the “boss”. The Boss can enter the picture at any stage, and they will look at a transaction from a different perspective again.  Their considerations might include stockholders, company directors, and longer term information that other company members don’t have access to. Combine all three types of people into a purchase decision and it’s easy to see how complex a complex sale can really be.

Search is a common denominator

With all the different variable behaviors that your customers may engage in, one thing that’s clear is that online search has become a mainstream source of information for everyone. Need a part number for a piece of machinery? Google it. Want to see what people are saying about a product? Look at Twitter. Do you want to see a product demonstration? Look it up on YouTube. Need to see pictures of a product in use? Search images on Bing. The list goes on and on.

The key point for marketing is that when customers are searching online, they’ve got to be able to find you there. Depending on the nature of your business and clientele, here are three basic steps to consider in building your online search strategy:

1. Optimize your company web site to be search engine friendly.
2. Start (and maintain) a company blog. Search engines will reward your site, and new and existing customers can find a good blog a valuable source of information that will help establish your company’s reputation as a leader.
3. If your company web site is not showing up in the search engines for important search terms that are relevant to your business, consider a paid search campaign to increase your online visibility.

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Karl Hourigan is a Digital Marketing Strategist with Mediative. Mediative is one of North America’s largest integrated digital marketing companies. Their results-oriented marketing network is supported by industry thought leaders and a data-driven platform.