Digital Marketing Consultant

Pay-per-click (PPC) or Paid Search Marketing is a form of online advertising where you can attract traffic to your website or landing page via ads hosted on a search engine. Google, Yahoo, MSN or any other search engine you choose to advertise with will display your PPC ad when a keyword query matches your keyword list, or when a content site displays relevant content.

How does PPC benefit your online marketing initiatives?

• Immediate Results. Your ad will be visible on the search results page as soon as your PPC campaign with a search engine goes live.
• Cost Control. As an advertiser, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, not each time it shows up. You can control your spending on each PPC campaign. This is one way to ensure that your marketing plan for different categories of your products or services achieves targeted results. Not to mention, it is an inexpensive and easy way to get search traffic.
• Geographically Targeted. You have the ability to select a particular area or region as the target market by adjusting your PPC campaign settings accordingly.
• Seasonal / Time-specific Marketing Approach. You can actually define ad scheduling; choosing to run your campaign only on the precise days and in fact during the hours you want.

If you would like a better understanding of how to do this economically, contact us.

Word-of-Mouth (WOM) Marketing

Social media provides us with the ability to find and comment about almost any product and service niche very quickly.

If we’re looking for a recommendation, review or comment on a company or its services, all we have to do is type our query in Google and look for social media sites that provide the answer.

People type in their search words into Google, find a few social media sites that are interesting and start a conversation. People are talking about your company, its products and even your service, and all this information is easily accessible via search engines like Google.

Everyday each one of us is subjected to intrusive marketing messages in the forms of advertisements from the following media:

• Television
• Radio
• Billboards
• Junk mail
• Newspapers

Word-of-Mouth is one of the most effective forms of marketing as *74% of people place a lot of trust in their friends’ and experts’ opinions.

Also, relevancy of your marketing message drives the conversions you get out of it, as there is a lot of noise created by each marketer trying to get attention from the similar segment of customers.

The Internet allows conversations to spread at light speed around the globe, be heard by millions within minutes and has become one of the largest mass-communication mediums of our time.

1. 75% of American Internet users engage in social networks to communicate with friends (Source: Internet World Stats).
2. 13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
3. There are more than 100 new members on Facebook every hour.

Word-of-Mouth Marketing is generated by people having conversations about you and your products because:

• they like you
• they are unhappy with you
• they were asked their opinion about you
• their community is talking about you

Don't forget to check out our free Wisdom Book on-line.

*Source: Neilsen Global Trust In Advertising Survey, 2007

Social Media Use

People are changing the way they shop for products and services. They go to the Internet to find and gather information so that they can make an informed decision. It is much easier to get the information that you need by searching on Google than to look up a phone number in the Yellow Pages and then call. We just don’t want to be sold to.

Besides searching on Google, people are also looking for information on a number of social media sites such as:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Blogs
• Twitter
• Stumbleupon and other bookmarking sites

These social media sites enable us to get the “word of mouth” recommendations and advice that we all seek when considering making a purchase of a product or service.

Generation Y

Many of us in the “Baby Boomer” community think that social media is a trend for the younger generations “X” and “Y” as they are the most active in this medium.

The Generation “Y” population is over 70 million in America and by 2010 they will outnumber Baby Boomers. They will become our future leaders and the majority of them have been raised with technology and belong to one or more social networks.

Companies must start incorporating social media strategies into their marketing initiatives to engage with the Generation Y’s now to avoid being left behind in targeting this growing segment.

If you have not already, you should check out our free Wisdom Book.

The characteristics of Black Friday includes expanded shopping hours, quantity shopping, and deep discounts all for the purpose of attracting shoppers for the holiday shopping season.

The Black Friday campaign strategy may not be a good strategy for on-line marketing.  Marketers with a focus on luxury understand some things all internet marketers could benefit from.

Online shoppers searched and purchased more brands classified as luxury in 2010 compared to 2009.

This category of shopper does not require discounts and will typically spend twice as much as other shoppers do.  They also tend to make larger purchases at one time.  The shopping traits of the affluent shopper allows for on-line marketers to move more costly products and services and even without a discount.

Affluent shoppers have the means for impulse shopping.  They also tend to share their shopping finds with peers, family, and friends.  Affluent shoppers have the pocket book to complement impulsive buying.

Purchasing on-line compliments the busy schedules for affluent people.  Instead of waiting in the check- out line for thirty minutes, they can make their purchase with just the click of a button on the computer.

Affluent buyers become an influence for other shoppers.  Building a holiday marketing campaign to target the affluent shopper can help you offer and move luxury products.  Your offer of luxury items should be supported by ads on affluent websites where this target market would be spending time on-line.

Alignment of your luxury products and marketing campaigns to the suitability of the target market can help you to increase your sales this holiday season.   If your selection of products and marketing efforts have not included the affluent market, this holiday season could be the perfect time to expand your horizon into the affluent market.

Yes, some work is involved. 

Both online and offline customer service matters to the bottom line of your business.  Customer service is the single most important aspect to be considered for acquiring and retaining customers.  Building relationships with profitable customers is required for a thriving business.

Before you can build profitable customer relationships, you must first identify your profitable customers.  To accomplish this, you will need to develop and review reports that will allow you to track individual customer.  The results can be surprising.

Review your marketing campaign

Does your marketing campaign focus on discount attractions?  If so, you may want to evaluate this strategy a little closer.   Discounting marketing attraction does not typically contribute to building profitable customers.  Discount marketing attracts bargain shoppers, not necessarily profitable customers.  Reconsider your marketing campaigns that focus on discounted services and products instead of quality service and products.

Quality rather than quantity

Having a large number of customers does not always equate to a profit in business.   It just may be that targeting a specific market to your business would result in a more profitable business.

Expand Services and Products key to your most profitable customers

Providing expanded services and products for your businesses most profitable customers will be healthy for your bottom line and will also make this select set of your customers feel valued.  This will also place your company on your customers’ most valued relationship list.  This will enhance your profitability which building customer relationships.

Retaining profitable customers

To retain your most profitable customers may require you to choose not to service customers that are not profitable.   Building relationship and marketing to your customers that not profitable will take both time and funds away from your campaign efforts targeted to your most profitable customers.

Initially when you are building your customer base servicing all customers equally may have some value, but as your business develops, it can be more profitable to focus on your most profitable customers to take your business to the next level.  What can we do for your business?

When it comes to digital marketing, it is important not to get the cart before the horse.  You must put first things first to be successful.   The first step in developing an Internet Marketing program is to determine your market segment or segments.

In order to determine a Market Profile for your business, you must do adequate research.   Having a targeted campaign is essential if you want to be successful.   Research provides a proven track record for success when compared with a strategy of just taking a chance on a product or service.

You will want to look for keywords and also review your competitors websites.  Knowing who is the competition is one of the most valuable steps you can take to assure your business success.  The better the research you perform the better your site will become.  

Just the word research scares a lot of people away.   Market research does not have to be difficult.   Once you start doing research on your niche  you may be amazed at the amount of information available to you.

You may find you need to pare down your segment or number of segments to get to the numbers that can bring you success online. You might want to consider specializing in a particular style or size to get your segment narrowed down enough to be effective.  

There are many new online businesses everyday on the Internet.  The majority of these new business will fail.  Don’t let the business failures prevent you from taking the time and effort to build a strong Internet company. 

You can do a little research and determine the marketing campaign that will be most beneficial to you in the long run.    Finding a good product and then, with the use of keywords, pulling and directing traffic to your products and services is the first step in your business success story.

A warning: THIS IS ONLY THE FIRST STEP.  You have to convert visitors to customers.  Read our free Wisdom Book for more information.

Online marketing has opened new doors to the entrepreneurs of the small business world.   There are four essentials required in developing a strong online marketing campaign.

Niche Identification (Market Segmentation)

Deciding on a niche may be one of the toughest assignments you have in planning your marketing campaign.   Researching your market segment will provide you with the ammunition needed for building a successful marketing campaign.  Along with deciding what you are marketing, you will also need to research to whom you are marketing, i.e. your target market to better understand who they are and how you can relate to them to gain traffic to your site.

Setting Realistic Goals

While developing your site, adding content, and managing various components of your marketing campaign, you must set and reach for realistic goals.  Not setting goals is sure to lead to your business failure and setting unrealistic goals will also increase your chance of failure.  Establishing realistic goals will assure your success.  Requiring this goal setting means that you must try to come up with some statistical information concerning your market segment.

Budget Planning

Determining your budget for your marketing campaign will keep you on track for success.   You must budget both your time and money to be successful with your marketing campaign.  You cannot set a budget without setting goals; you cannot strategize without a budget.

The strategy you use will be based upon two things you have already established.  That is your niche and also your budget.   You must strategically plan your marketing.  You will need to give consideration to such things as what websites will you utilize and how can you increase traffic to your website.  You will want to plan to use social networks as a part of your strategic plan to obtain more traffic to your website.  You will need to stay abreast of the new upcoming technologies and marketing tools available.

Incorporating these four essentials into your marketing plan will improve your chances of success with internet marketing.  Get a feeling for how this is done by reading our free Wisdom Book.

Before we take a glimpse into the crystal ball of online marketing in the future, we first should take a glance back over the past 10-15 years.  It doesn’t even seem possible that many of the technologies that have become a part of our every lives and business weren’t even in existence 10-15 years ago.  But here we are.

Online marketing has gone from its infancy to its current state in just a little over 10 years.

As this monstrous growth of the internet and technology continues, it is obvious that online marketing is just getting started.  It really is still in its infancy.  So what will the future of online marketing be and how will we fit into it?

It has been difficult for online marketers to keep up with the technological changes and it has become a full-time job.  As a result, there are sites still using some of the outdated tools while other sites are on the edge of the technology innovation.

Some of the tools used have become problematic without advanced programs, such as email marketing with concerns of spam, identity theft, and phishing scams. Many people feel there is too much risk with email marketing.  Search engine optimization remains a solid tool, even though in the last couple of years even the way search engines rank sites has undergone significant changes.  Some sites have kept up with the changes and others have fallen behind despite their internet success being dependent upon moving their site along with the changing technology. 

Security concerns continue to threaten some social media sites futures.  Even pay-per-click future is in question with the continuing fraud which is costly for the online business owner.

Without doubt the future holds some changes in the online marketing tools in order to address fraud and security concerns.  Search engine optimization still undergo some additional changes but will continue but may not continue as we know them today.

But we are mere mortals. If you are curious to know more, Raymond Kurzweil has been quite accurate in predicting what was to be.  If you want to catch up to the present on your business on-line sales, see our Wisdom Book.

The single most important advice to be given to a business owner is to adapt to your target market. 

It is vital that every business stays up with the rest of the world.  Yes, you will always have some customers who place high value on the traditions, but there will also be the drive to change.  Time moves along and so will your customers and their shopping behaviors.  You simply can not afford to be left in the shadows. 

You must remember your customers will get what they want weather you provide it or not.

The change you must be willing to make is to get going in a digital sort of way.  Both consumers and businesses, children and adults, the transition offline to online is happening.  The digital world is impacting our communication with each other, entertainment preferences and virtually every way we obtain different types of information.  This knowledge is key to each individual’s future success.

Just a few short years ago the yellow pages was the main method used to obtain products, business contact information and services.   But in today’s world customers search online by way of the major search engines such as Yahoo, Google, or MSN to find the services and products they have need of.  If these great search engines can’t locate you online you can mark it down your customer’s can’t find you either. 

Companies have long ago replaced stamped letter service to communicate with their clients with online methods including blogs, emails, and social networks. 

Have you stopped to consider why everything is going digital?  The answer is relatively easy.  It is simply because that is what the customers are already doing on a daily basis.   Previously people used the internet for entertaining and fun activities and now the business world must get on board digitally. 

It is time to get on board leaving the Ice Age behind!

You might want to visit http://www.squidoo.com/Social_Media_for_Business.

If you would like help with your present situation, see http://www.squidoo.com/Website_Audit.  And look for the free gift.

And finally, if you would simply like to read some excellent material on the subject, go to http://bit.ly/WSIwisdomBook starting at page 93.

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