It’s Hard to Go Back on Poor Online Marketing Decisions

In traditional marketing a bad decision about an ad layout lasts only as long as the current issue. When it comes to the Internet a poor decision or uneducated choice can have lasting implications on success of a business. Something placed on the Internet is easily found years later, even if it was deleted or only online for a short time. Conversely something found online today may not be easily found tomorrow if the wrong decisions are made or a disreputable online marketing company is used.

Any true online marketing expert understands the value and importance of ‘link weight’ pertaining to website visits from potential buyers and how a search engine ranks a website The higher the ranking by a search engine the more times a website will be seen and visited by potential customers and conversely if a website is not ranked well it will never be viewed or visited by potential buyers. Google has published the fact that a primary website ranking algorithm for ranking websites is how many other websites link to a website and what the value of those websites is. This was best illustrated in the 2004 Presidential Election where Democrats placed links to the George Bush profile on thousands of websites with the term ‘miserable failure’ resulting in George Bush being the 1st item shown on Google when users searched for ‘miserable failure’. If a website has dozens of other highly valued websites linking TO it then Google considers that website of higher value and ranks the website higher in search results.

The same works in reverse meaning that a website with several highly ranked websites linking TO it will be perceived as lower value if those other websites no longer link to the website. Search Engines often consider this in terms of companies going out of business or offering less valued or less important services. When a Search Engine tracks links moving from one website to others the link weight is lowered for the negative links being moved away thus lowering the ranking and reach of the website. The result of this is much lower traffic often resulting in less leads and lower sales instantly without a simple solution to repair. An unfortunate example of this was a website Builder Consulting built for a Tulsa home builder that went from less than 400 users per month to over 4,000 monthly user visits (potential buyers visiting the website).

When the company hired a new marketing manager she decided to cancel all online marketing and move the website to a new website company she liked with disastrous results. Builder Consulting had steadily increased the website traffic to an average of 2,200 unique users (buyrs) visiting per month. After the new marketing director changed the website to a new website company the website had a 92.08% decrease in unque buyer visits in less than one month to a low of 161 visitors to the website; less than it had ever been in more than a decade. The significant changes made to the online marketing led to a catastrophic result for the customer in less than one month that will not easily be resolved with several months effort.

There may be another change in marketing ahead when the owner of the company finds out his website is down 92.08% simply because of a poor choice made that caused the company to lose 92% of potential client visits to the website in less than 30 days. Little things have a large affect online, watch out for anyone promising unrealistic results or unquantifiable actions since there are far more bad online marketers than there are good ones.

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
BuilderConsulting.com
913-814-8844 Corporate Offices

Understanding Pay Per Click PPC Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing through use of Pay Per Click (PPC) ads is an effective method of placing any website in front of prospective clients without having to optimize or market the website. Companies with new websites, extremely old websites or websites which offer multiple services in multiple locations are best serviced through use of pay per click marketing. Search Engine pay per click marketing (Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft bCentral) is typically setup with a daily and/or monthly budget for the marketing campaign.

In traditional advertising marketers charge for a specific location in a magazine or newspaper in hopes that someone saw the advertisment based on a distribution number created by the company selling the advertising. This left much to be desired since the company selling the advertising was the same company providing the customers with the ‘distribution numbers’ estimating how many people might see the magazine or newspaper and hopefully view the advertisment inside of it. There was no true way to judge how many people saw the advertisment or what the return on investment was for the ad campaign. Online advertising, specifically pay per click (PPC) changed things with the pay for performance method of costs.

With PPC advertising a company only pays when the advertisment they show on the search engine is clicked on and a prospective customer is taken to the website to view the customer. When a customer simply views the ad on a search engine, without clicking, then there is no cost to anyone. Advertisers may setup a daily and monthly budget to spend for ads in addition to individual bids (yes bidding similar to ebay) for each search term or keyword phrase. A company or individual may bid for a particular phrase or set of keywords to have their advertisment show up when a search was done for those words on a search engine. The benefit is that advertisers pay for exactly what they receive while the detraction of bidding on keywords is that competitors can instantly outbid each other driving the costs up dramatically.

This means that ten companies may bid for the keyword phrase ‘Kansas City Website Companies’ all spending $1 per click to show up in the first ten advertising locations on a search engine. When ten more companies decided to bid on the same set of keywords they outbid the first companies for $1.50 per click or 50% higher cost per click. When the first set of companies see they have been outbid and their ads are no longer showing then they bid $2 a click or 100% more for the same traffic. Bidding sometimes becomes extremely competative when people or companies target a specific keyword phrase with no limit on how high the bidding goes for each click.

The benefit of Pay Per Click is that companies never pay for the branding/marketing aspects of having online users view the ad unless the online user actually clicks on the ad (thus pay per click). Online marketers sometimes neglect taking the time to search for the best ‘bang for the buck’ when setting up PPC accounts for clients. Builder Consulting spends several hours consulting with the customer to determine the top keywords and phrases then sets a specific budget for each term based upon the overall monthly goals and cost per click likelyhood of a return on investment. Keep in mind that any account setup with a daily and monthly budget will not show all ads all of the time.

The rate at which ads are shown is based upon budgets, likelyhood of the ad delivering a click (more effective ads are shown more often), the number of advertisers paying for each search term and the remaining balance of a budget for each advertiser. Any individual or company can setup pay per click advertising in a matter of minutes, setting it up properly to requires experiance and an understanding of the overall concepts, goals and technical aspects of the systems to provide a true return on investment.

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
BuilderConsulting.com
913-814-8844 Offices

Online Classifieds Usage Double Since 2005

According to the latest Pew Internet Research study nearly 50% of all Internet users are using online classifieds. Forty-nine percent of online adults surveyed said they have visited sites like Craigslist, Kijiji and Oodle, up from only 22% in 2005. The study says that 9% of Internet users visit these sites on any given day, compared with 4% four years ago.

Online classifieds are particularly popular with 25 to 44 year old Internet users, more than half of whom use Internet classifieds, while just under half of 18 to 24 year olds and 45 to 54 year olds 49% and 48%, respectively use online classifieds.

Those figures fall for users over 55 with 35% of 55 to 64 year olds using classified websites, while 26% of Internet users over 65 do.

Use of classified sites also increases with income and education, with online adults earning $50,000 or more, as well as college graduates, considerably more likely to have visited them. The Pew Research study highlights the growing importance of online classifieds to Internet users and reflects the changes in the audience for classified ads in terms of those who place them and those who make purchases using online classified websites which devastated a key revenue source for traditional newspapers.
Craigslist is by far the most used website in the United States. In March 2009 all classified websites averaged 53.8 million unique visitors, up 7% from February. Craigslist alone had 42.2 million unique visitors in the month of March (out of the total 53.8 million total users). Newspaper classified revenue fell from 17.4 Billion to $10 billion over the same period with real estate classifieds down 52% since their peak in 2006. Total Internet ads revanue for newspapers in 2008 was $3.1 billion according to the Newspaper Association of America.

Just as past studies of online users have shown, adults living in households with incomes of $50,000 or more a year are significantly more likely to visit and use classified ads sites than lower earners. More than half (56%) of higher income Internet users use sites like Craigslist, compared with 47% of those making $30,000-$49,999 and 42% of those making less than $30,000 a year. In addition, online adults making $50,000 or more are more than twice as likely as those earning less than $30,000 a year to use online classified ads on a typical day.

The Internet continues to be the strong point in business and live with the numbers clearly showing adaptation by the average user.

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
www.BuilderConsulting.com
913-814-8844 Office

Back to the Basics…Sales & Marketing First

The past week has been spent speaking with marketing directors, sales managers and consultants about their Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, ActiveRain and other online social networking accounts. One sales manager shared and email from marketing firm outlining a several month long marketing campaign done by creating a fake person on Facebook intended on tricking buyers into coming to see homes for sale. The email shared that several people had agreed to be be Facebook friends with the fake person and even attended a party at a new urban condo unit. There was no information on how people reacted when they found out they had been tricked into visiting the community by a salesperson though the email did share say the marketing had lots of buzz until it was shut down by Facebook for violating terms of use and creating fake accounts. Are legitimate marketing professionals now Twittering for customers or spending months on fake online profiles creating fake people to trick buyers into viewing their products or location?

Would someone who was tricked into visiting a home by a fake person on a fake online account be the best prospective buyer? What ever happened to generating leads and sales through marketing? What happened to connecting with buyers through legitimate methods such as a well developed and search engine optimized website or effective targeted email marketing followed by personal calls to prospects to help generate interest. There are home buyers out there and the majority of buyers are using the Internet to search for homes, legitimate buyers are looking for a home for the best price not trying to be entertained or invited to a party. Multiple opportunities to reach buyers and share a message is good though quite a few marketing firms seem to be focusing efforts on random items online tools or Tweets while forgetting the basics of Sales and Marketing!

Build a better website, buy online advertising to put yourself in front of prospective buyers where they are looking then focus efforts on Twittering and creating online areas to chat with someone in hopes they may buy something. Back to the basics, the basics changed moving away from newspaper and print ads to the Internet Super Highway where you can reach more buyers and sell more…if the basics are done properly.

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
http://www.BuilderConsulting.com
913-814-8844 Offices

Social Media Tools for Easy Online Marketing

Some of the best places to market today are FREE, more classified ads are placed daily on Craigslist.com than any other website except Ebay (who happened to buy Craigslist) while there are dozens of other similar websites used for online ads. Most users simply post an ad online using the basic ad creation tools built into each classified ad website causing the ads to blend in with others easily. A way to augment your online ads is to create a ‘webpage’ using HTML and external image hosting yet this requires some level of website design skill, the software and time to develop the ad; most people will not take the time to do this.

Another solution is to use the excellent online tools, What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) HTML Editors that create the webpage for you through a few basic steps. One such website is vFlyer www.vflyer.com enabling customized online ad creation for Real Estate, Rental/Leasing, Automotive/Cars and Marketing Companies. Setup of an account and basic flyers is FREE with a small paid subscription service available for those who post multiple ads each month.

Another online website with FREE social media marketing tools is Easy Auto Sales www.EasyAutoSales.com specifically setup for for automotive ad creation, classifieds and posting. The Easy Auto Sales website incorporates unique tools such as Facebook integration, history of buyer/seller ads, creation of custom HTML for posting the ad on other websites and direct feeds to many search engines showcasing any auto posted within the website to buyers on Yahoo and Google FREE of charge. Functionality includes online community forums of automotive questions, car clubs and vehicle research.

Last but not least is the Postlets Classified Ad Creation and Marketing website www.Postlets.com primarily focused on real estate ad creation while incorporating tools for cars and trucks as well. The unique feature of Postlets is that the ads created are marketed directly to all of the following top social media websites for FREE once the ad is completed:

	craigslist
	Facebook
	FrontDoor
	Google Base
	HotPads
	MySpace
	Oodle
	Trulia
	Twitter
	Vast
	Zillow

The basic Postlets account is FREE enabling full access to the website, ad creation and basic marketing tools. Enhanced options create a complete website for online ads with enhanced marketing for each of the individual posts at a nominal charge of $5 for one, $40 for 10 or $75 for 25 ads including the website and marketing. That equates to $3 per ad at the bulk rate which is much less expensive than newspapers or other online paid advertising websites.

To request additional information on other online marketing, social media or website development contact Builder Consulting www.BuilderConsulting.com

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
Internet & Technology Expert
Builder Consulting – Building Better Websites with Results Since 1995
913-814-8844

Building Business through Social Networking

Nearly everyone has heard of Myspace, Youtube and the other social networking giants even if they may not yet have an account. Mentioning Myspace to older relatives instantly brings the thought of Dateline ‘To Catch a Preditor‘ yet that is far from the actual truth as to what social networking websites are about. The Web 2.0 ideology brings to light the true social medium of the Internet connecting millions of people worldwide sharing ideas, information and products 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year.

The Internet now contains more than 500,000,000 domain names (website addresses) with hundreds of thousands more registered each week. Somehow companies continue to believe that 1 (one) single lonely website is going to be ranked high enough to reach all prospective buyers in all potential areas. Simply put one website cannot be everything to every search engine and the odds are a single website without any outside help will not be ranked well online. One option to improve the odds is using social networking websites to place the website address, company information and products or services on thousands of places worldwide.

One of the most popular business focused websites is http://www.linkedin.com/ enabling users to join for free, setup a professional profile, experience, website links, contact information and even testimonials. The Linked In website provides an online directory of business contacts, feeds content (your information and website) to search engines and functions as an online resume. Myspace http://www.myspace.com/ is typically known for teen and young adult visitors though more than 1/2 million visitors are over the age of twenty five (25). Builder Consulting setup a Myspace account years ago http://www.Myspace.com/BuilderConsulting and posts new websites launched, updated information, contacts and connects with other industry professionals worldwide.

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/ or Ning http://www.ning.com/ and YouTube http://www.youtube.com/ are other viable online sources for social networking. Whenever video is used on your website use YouTube to host the video, add your keywords and embed the video within your website. This provides double duty by freeing up resources on your website and reaching millions of potential customers using YouTube. This video from Mike Brown of Brown Midwest has been viewed dozens of times on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lauDSiZ_hN0 while also being featured on the home page of the company website http://www.brownmidwest.com/.

KEEP IN MIND that unlike traditional media or marketing what is posted online tends to stay online. Search engines cache information and webpages meaning they download and store the content on their servers to provide the fastest results for search queries online. Consider how many millions upon millions of websites are online then consider how fast the Search Results are shown when using Google or Yahoo. The search is being completed within the directory of pre-searched and ranked websites stored by the search engine. A search engine does not truly search the Internet; it searches the pre-determined list of websites and rankings already stored.

Social Networking Websites tend to be free but the content is still a reflection of your company, services and products. Ensure anything posted online accurately and professionally markets a business; online users will include or exclude your company based upon the ease of use, access to information and overall feel from your website or any third party source.

Robert ‘Dot Com’ Jackson
http://www.builderconsulting.com/
Building Better Websites & Online Success Since 1995
913-814-8844 Corporate Offices