Marketing Joy

Website Budget - how much is too much?

I'm often asked about whether the price of a website actually indicates its quality or functionality, and the answer is.... it depends.

The price of building a website can fluctuate wildly. Some providers offer to do it for a few hundred, while others will produce works of art for hundreds of thousands of dollars. How do you know what you need and how much to spend to get it? Here are a few questions to ask yourself to help you decide:

1. What is my overall marketing budget for the year?
I've talked to many who spend marketing dollars on strategies that really haven't paid dividends - but it's just what they've always done. Why not consider taking funds out of those "dogs" and considering investing them into your website?

2. How many people are searching for what I do?
There are tools out there that give you some data on searches - and a great one historically has been at inventory.overture.com. Unfortunately, it's becoming less and less effective, and so you may want to consider using a paid service such as Wordtracker to do key phrase research to see what your customers are searching for online. Perhaps if you see that there's enough online action in your space, you can decide to divert more budget to your online presence.

3. Have I talked with someone outside my organization about what my web needs are?
Just because someone in your company plays with websites on the weekend does not mean he or she should be the de facto webmaster. Talk to companies who specialize in web strategy and design. See what they have to say and feel them out on price and deliverables. More importantly, look at portfolios and get references. Sometimes you'll just feel more comfortable with the style of a certain company either in their designs or in their customer relationship management.

4. What do I need my website to do?
Do you have a fairly static offering or does your business evolve quickly? Do you sell a consumer product or are you an enterprise entity looking at a long sales cycle? These questions will help you determine how often you need to be changing your website, and if it's wise to invest in a content management system along with your website. A CMS gives you the ability to access your pages (and products) directly - without going through a developer - to make changes and updates. It is an absolute MUST for some websites, and a great idea for everyone else too.

5. How much would you spend on hiring, training and equipping another sales representative?
Ask yourself what it's worth to you to have a 24 hour sales person representing you - who never takes a break or a vacation or calls in sick. Spend AT LEAST that much on your website and web marketing throughout the year.

Many a website has been created on a whim, without much thought for budget, strategy or messaging. Unfortunately without planning, you can end up not getting what you expected. Either you pay too much and don't need what you got, or you paid too little and need more that what you got.

SEO Diagnostic Tool Available

There's so much out there about search engine optimization - and so little of it seems to be worthwhile. I hear horror stories about people being "sold" search engine placement for thousands of dollars (sometimes MORE) and promised overnight results.

Because many companies have limited web marketing budgets, I recommend being armed with knowledge is two key areas with regards to SEO:
1. What you NEED
-AND-
2. What it takes to get you there

1. What you need is to be findable for the right key phrases. Perhaps the phrases are descriptive or location specific or possibly solution-based - in any case, a good SEO provider will be able to help you determine the right key phrases to optimize your site for and the ones that will help achieve your overall sales or communications goals. If you'd rather discover those on your own with some time and research, you can go to Wordtracker.com and use their suite of tools for keyword data.

2. What it takes to get there is knowledge of what facets of your site CAN be improved for search engine findability - and we've got a great tool to recommend to assess your site's SEO prowess at SEOdiagnostic.com. It can read over your site and give you feedback on what your site does and doesn't have for optimal search rankings.

You can use these tools as a way to gain the information you need to optimize your site with your in-house resources and/or current webmaster or when choosing an outside SEO service provider. Either way, learn more about your site before you embark on the SEO journey!

More Enterprise Internet Marketing Nuggets

Aside from being found, creating reliability, credibility and expertise is ultimately what will drive customers in the enterprise space to connect with your brand and ultimately to do business with you. How do you build such things?

Creating and maintaining a blog: 2-3 blog entries per week. This strategy has tremendous SEO benefit as well as building trust and credibility with the target audience. It carries little or no costs except blog set-up. If the blog is connected to your website (and dynamically displayed on various pages you wish to optimize, you now have an amazing SEO advantage because of the content updates happening a few times per week.)

Content generation: writing at least one article per month, adding new, fresh web content at least once per week. Again, great SEO benefit as well as user experience benefit by creating landing pages/keyword rich content within the website. Submitting rich content white papers/case studies can also be incorporated in this strategy.

Press releases (also known lately as SEO PR if you're focusing the effort on gaining online visibility versus traditional ink): put out at least one release per month. The exposure is valuable for visibility and credibility, and the SEO benefit is tremendous as well. You will need to budget for out of pocket expenses including draft, edits, and outlet submission costs, which vary depending on where you want to release.

These are tactics every business should consider to gain that all-important exposure to your customers who are searching online. Not sure how to get your online lead generation going? Ask us how.

The Case for Internet Marketing

The justification for prioritizing online marketing is simple: over 80% of enterprise customers looking for a product or service start their search on a search engine. Nearly ALL of those customers use Google to conduct their search. So why not throw your entire budget into search engine optimization (focusing on Google) and into Pay-per-click (focusing primarily on AdWords)?

Winning the online prospects isn’t as simple as what we call “findability”. While that’s highly important, there are some critical aspects of being findable:
1.    WHERE you’re found (your site, blog, article sites, etc.)
2.    WHAT is found (trends/insights, articles, press releases)
3.    WHEN you’re found (curiosity, research, purchase intent)
4.    WHO finds you (decision-maker, user, admin)
5.    HOW you’re perceived once you are found

Because findability is so important, the two main strategies in this arena plus some suggested quantifiable deliverables include

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): developing backlinks, 100 per month minimum, as well as improving the quality of those links is one key component of SEO. The other part of successful SEO is dynamic content generation. You should expect to constantly improve your current movement in Alexa Ranking (though this is NOT the be all, end all sign of success or failure in SEO). Most importantly, it is wise to focus efforts on best-performing key phrases from a CONVERSION stand point. Are the customers who find you in the natural results buying/contacting from the current key phrase initiatives? That's what we want to see.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) also known as Pay-per-click: Quite possibly your best strategy, pound-for-pound in your entire online marketing strategy. Through PPC, you have the most control, the most agility and the most data to work with. Metrics here are simple: increase conversions by increasing qualified impressions and click-through-rates; decrease cost per conversion incrementally month over month; introduce cross promotional targeting with other marketing initiatives and specific location targeting with relevant landing pages to create the right information and feel for your customers, depending on their needs and segmentation.

Lots more to come - but findability through search engines is an important place to start.

How Do You Get Noticed in the Media?

Well, having a great PR agency with the right pr strategy and media relationships doesn't hurt... but what if you want to DIY PDQ? (Don't you just love all of the acronyms in this text message age?)

There's a great resource called PRtraffic.com that, for only $99 per month, will allow you to choose which topics you'd like to be a SME (subject matter expert) and play to journalists and writers who can give you publicity and search engine love. It also offers some great suggestions on how to stand out from the crowd when answering requests from the media. They get so many responses to their info requests that you really have to find a way to rise above the noise. I believe that their strategies and suggestions on how to craft your communications with the writers will definitely help your message to rise to the top.

For the purposes of being findable and establishing credibility and personality, getting mentions in print and online can help you tremendously. It also doesn't hurt to have the link love and the likely boost in page rank. Check it out to see if there are topics where you can be a SME...

It's the New Year... Do you know where your ranking is?

With everyone clamoring to create New Year's resolutions about eliminating vices or getting organized, why not set a New Year's resolution for your business? THIS YEAR I WILL GAIN VISIBILITY to my customers in ways they can appreciate and recognize.

How can your customers find you? Are your customers looking for you in the Yellow Pages (probably not unless they are in one of a few specific demographics) or through word of mouth referrals? Most likely, someone, somewhere is searching for what you do on the Internet - and chances are, there's more than one! Can they find you when they search?

If not, perhaps it's time to make a list and check it twice to be sure that "findability" is a top priority for 2007.

Link Quality Beats Quantity Every Time

Everyone knows links are important in driving traffic to your Web site and improving your search engine rankings. But before you start submitting your links to link farms and asking everyone you know to link to your site, think about the quality of the links you’ll be receiving. When it comes to search engine rankings and targeted traffic, quality outweighs quantity every time. Because the search engines are constantly being changed to reflect the changing needs of users, many search engine companies are concerned with improving the search experience. Part of improving this experience means changing the way links are counted and used to determine search engine rankings. Having many one-way links to your site is no longer the best way to generate more traffic and improve your search engine placement. Instead, you also need to consider the quality of your links, and that means changing your link building strategy. Consider the following the next time you are building links to your Web site:

Adding your site to a link farm can get you penalized. Adding your site to a link farm may seem like a good idea, but this is a case of “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” Because link farms accept pretty much any site with the money to pay for a submission, you’re taking the chance of having your link placed near a link to an inappropriate site that you don’t want to be associated with. In addition, the search engines may penalize you for having a link placed on a site that is not relevant to your content. Instead of using link farms, find sites that are relevant to yours and arrange to have your linked placed on those sites.

The PageRank of a site isn’t the only factor to consider. Since PageRank has become a well-known method of checking how popular a site is, many people think that having a link placed on a site with a high PageRank is the best way to generate traffic and improve search engine placement. This is another case of quality taking precedence over quantity or popularity.

 

Link Building Using PageRank as an Indicator of Quality

When you’re building links, it’s important to consider the quality of the links you’re building in addition to the quantity. Google has a statistic called PageRank, which is an indicator of how important a page is on the Internet. In calculating PageRank, Google considers a link to a Web site as a vote for that site’s importance. While considering PageRank is important when you are building links to your site, it is important to review other information besides that one number.

Beware of sites with many similar pages. Adding pages to a Web site can help increase its PageRank, but having pages that are almost identical can cause the site to be penalized for spamming the search engines. You don’t want something to happen that causes your site to be looked on unfavorably by search engine users or the search engines themselves.

The number of outbound links on a site is important. While a site’s PageRank is important in determining whether you should be linked to by the site, the number of outbound links is also important. Consider two Web sites with a PageRank of 7 and 8, respectively. The site with a PR of 7 has 10 outbound links and the site with a PR of 8 has 100 outbound links. While the site with a PR of 8 may be more important, the quality of outbound links from that site is lower than the quality of the links from the site with a PR of 7. If you can get a link to your site placed on a site that only has 10 outbound links, that link will be higher in quality because the search engines will assume that your site must be important to take one of the spots on a site that only gives 10 links to other sites.

When it comes to building links, it’s important to use all of the information at your disposal to build quality links that will bring you the best results. When using PageRank as an indicator of quality, be sure to consider the number of links on a site as well as the quality of content on that site. Doing so will ensure that your efforts are rewarded with better rankings and increased traffic.

Content Comes First on your Landing Page

Sometimes pleasing Google's algorithm for Adwords Quality Score seems like hitting a moving target, but there's no doubt that content plays a major role in the landing page component of your Quality Score. Here's what you should know about Google Adwords with regards to your landing page's content:

The content should be as specific and relevant as possible - both for your users information and for Google's generation of your Quality Score. Ad Copy and key phrases should be found in abundance on the landing page - your customer doesn't want to be fooled or confused and neither Google! Being broad on your page is a sure-fire way to negatively affect performance. What's in is creating multiple landing pages, each addressing SPECIFICALLY what your keywords suggest and what your ad states (your quality score depends on it)!

Match up the hot buttons: whatever you used as your hook on your ad, you should carry over onto your landing page. If they are compelled to act because of your price - promote it. If it was your selection or experience or WHATEVER, then be sure - even in the headline, to reinforce WHY they should choose you.

How much is too much? Be strategic about HOW MUCH content is delivered on the landing page, particularly “above the fold” (the area where people can see without having to scroll). Unless your visitor sought you out for information, don't overwhelm them with text high up on the landing page. If they used key phrases like "info", "review", "guide", "resources", by all means, give them everything but the kitchen sink, but even then you need to organize the info so they can get to the information THEY care most about. Having a list of topics or questions at the top that takes them directly to the answer in the text below is a winning idea.

Speak to your customers in a language and tone they can understand. HOW you say it can be as important as WHAT you say. If it's a crowd that likes technical jargon and lots of it, then you should aim to please with rich, in-depth content offered in a variety of ways on the page. However, if you need to make your point quickly to a teenage crowd, for example, use catch phrases, edgy language and more imagery. Bottom line is: know your audience and speak their language.

Give something for nothing. You should have good, informative, relevant content BEFORE you require a visitor to sign up. Do this primary because your prospects appreciate it and secondarily because Google looks out for it when calculating your Quality Score. In fact, "voluntary" opt-ins are of more use to you than not. You want people who WANT to hear from you because you have a better chance of conversion.

Put to use these landing page content guidelines and get results both from your Adwords campaigns as well as from your sales!

OK - another 10 List!

10 Adwords Bidding & Budget Management Tips 

(All are “As a rule…” and must be verified by you with your own conversion stats!)

1. Bid a few cents more than $.05 increments (i.e. $1.02 instead of $1.00 - you never know who you'll beat out by just pennies.)
2. Don’t immediately increase your budget to increase position – try optimizing your ad copy and headline first (refer to call #4) I can’t emphasize enough the power of tightening ad groups and optimizing ad copy so your copy can be more specific. By improving ad copy overall you can increase positioning, increase CTR, increase clicks, reduce costs and increase ROI.
3. The more qualified and specific your search term, the higher your can set your position preference (i.e. for the phrase [purple fuzzy iPod cover], we could choose to come up #1, but for “iPod cases”, we should absolutely NOT come up #1)
4. Bid lower (often much lower) on searches more like to result in a looker vs. a buyer (searches for “review”, “info”, “guide”, “prices” etc.)
5. Bid just as much for misspellings – they have the same intent! (Tool for generating common typos is http://www.searchspell.com/typo/ )
6. Bid lower for competitor brand names/model #’s (shown to be not as valuable a click – often a curious looker)
7. If you opt for the Content Network (which I regularly pass on), utilize Content Network bids and mark them down by about half
8. Use your Advanced Search option in the Tools section to quickly make bidding changes without having to manually change bids one by one.
9. When going into your ad groups, sort by click cost or total cost and IMMEDIATELY compare it to your conversion statistics
10. Constantly be checking and re-checking to see if there are any NEGATIVE key phrases that you should be adding to your campaign level or ad group level key phrase lists to limit wasted budget.