Pros & Cons of Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a very populat form of driving traffic to a website, especially to a brand new one.

Google Adwords is the leader of PPC engine and I guess followed by Yahoo Search and MSN. No matter which one you choose to start with the process are similar - you decide which keywords you want to target, write an ad and are charged every time someone clicks it.

Anyways, lets analyse the pros and cons of PPC as a traffic source.

Pros

• PPC traffic can be turned on and off instantaneously. Once you have done your keyword research, you can be up and running in less than 15 minutes.
• It is very targeted, since you can decide the time of day and the location from which your ads should be seen.
• Its the ideal method of testing how your website converts. You can run as many tests as you want, with the goal of improving your conversion rate. PPC can help you refine your website before using other traffic sources.
• While in banner advertising you pay by impressions (an impression is when someone sees your ad), in PPC you pay only when someone clicks. This means you are paying only for the actual traffic Google is sending you. 
• Adwords is also a good way to quickly test if there is a market for a new product not yet developed. The marketer can perhaps perform a survey on the landing page to learn if theres interest on a new item/and/or technology possibly entering the marketplace.

 Cons

•  Google Adwords is a very popular way of driving traffic. The more people use the system, the more it will cost to achieve the top position. Depending on how many advertisers are in your market, it is uncommon to go over $1 a click for the top spot.
• You can't rely solely on PPC. It is easier for a competitor with deeper pockets to outid you. 
• Since Adwords seem so easy at first, many advertisers do not invest the time necessary to track the ROI of their investment. They just turn their campaign on. Only by tracking your campaigns, you know which keywords don't convert and can exclude them from your campaign.

Brand Reputation and Search Engine – Correlated?

I was reading Advertising Age this afternoon and read an article titled "Search Shifts Means Visibility Must be Earned, Not Paid". Does this infer that brand reputation and search engine optimisation are correlated? If so, this has many ramifications.

I believe marketers should devote more attention to SEO rather than SEM, as the title in Advertising Age suggets. Consumers look to the internet for information and education to help them make a more informed decision. 

In the fase paced interconnected world that we live in today, consumers are going to talk about your company regardless if you have entered the online space. So even your offline campaigns, customer service, product quality with be talked about online. And of course these conversations can make or break your brand reputation.

As part of SEM, one of the variable of getting higher rankings, content needs to be refreshed and of course rich in information can be a very powerful variable in pushing up brand name in Search Engines.

Consumers want to know more about the company/brand and read about reviews and feedbacks from current customers. But hey isn't that a way social marketing? People are searching, people are also perhaps in engaging in long-tail searches on your company and brand. So having good or bad press on search engines may be a deal winner or breaker for you - depends on how it swings.

Somehow this is no longer PUSH marketing but PULL marketing at play. Not new I might say, in the past we have always trusted our friends more than advertisements anyway.

So concluding, I personally feel that brand reputation and search engine are correlated - be it good or bad reputation. Search marketing now is not just about generating leads, it is also a strategy in itself that goes beyong selling a product.

What are your thoughts?

Social Media Monitoring Tools

Here are just some of the Social Media Marketing Monitoring tools that I use. Some are retty good and some not but nevertheess still works. 

• Google Alerts
• TweetBeep
• Watchthatpage
• Trendrr
• Trackur.com
• Google Trends
• Blogpulse

Please feel free to add to the list for those I’ve missed out. Thanks!

Social Media humanizes your brand?

I think so! But do you think firms are more concerned about "negative comments"?

You bet! Of course that really depends on how the interaction is conversed online. Social media gives business the opportunity never befper to access consumers honest and candid feedback

You bet! of course that depends on how you interaction and converse online. Social media gives firms the opportunity never before to access consumer’s candid feedback and of course business are given the opportunity to respond and relate back to the consumers.

The "problem" I see though is that a significant number of companies still treat social media as a channel for sales. Firms should think beyong that and use social media as a means to better interact with their customers and garner feedback.

Though I have heard is that firms seem to be only concern about one major point - what if someone gave us a really bad feedback? Can we delete bad comments?, etc, etc. Fixating on negativity.

If you think about it, businesses should really be asking how they are going to engage with their consumer? Social Media did not invent critisicm. Businesses have always dealth with complaints via phone calls, email, face to face. So how different is this? 

Social Media...what are your thoughts?

What are your thoughts? How do we use the technologies within social media to further promote our business? Why do we even bother about social media when there are so many other technologies we marketers could use?
 
Two questions to ask ourselves:
1)    What are our business objective of using social media?
2)    How do we measure social media according to our business objectives?
 
But really, the main question for me is...Is social media suitable for all companies? Are companies just following the band wagon? 
 
I feel that it ultimately boils down to the company’s objective and its means of competition and how they view social media. If the culture of the organisation is pretty much conservative and bounded by heaps of regulatopms perhaps social marketing is not the right platform for them.

But this is just my opinion. Let me know what you think..

Internet is no longer the "New Media".

I have noticed that many seem to ignore the fact that the digital space has been around for more than a decade. Really it is no longer the "New Media" as what traditional marketers, agencies or media owners are trying to "convince" in the corporate world. There is a new generation of digitally savvy users out there who are ready to take the digital world by a storm. All so ready to experiment, explore and be part of the global online citizen.

I remember having my first computer when I was between 6-9 years old. It was an old cluncky, brownish looking thing which I didn't think you can hook on to the internet with. But all the computer then did for me was..yes..GAMES! I enjoyed playing the "limited" games on the computer so much that one day the computer gave up on me. Oh well..

Then when I was bout 14 years old, my father brought home a beautiful laptop from the States and I was in love. I was in awe with the power of technology and yes was in love with the internet. I spent all my free time on the ever so famous IRC chatroom. I was hooked. There was no looking back after that.

Comparing the technology we had back then..gosh so much has changed. Who cares about IRC when we have MSN, Gtalk, Twitter and Facebook! 

The maturing digital community has created a critical mass that is so large, large enough for us marketing profesionals to market, measure and to understand the different behaviors aspects of the different segments within the market. 

This is the insight which is sadly not practiced (as much as we would like) in the marketing profession as measuring and analytics is not a discipline which most practicing industury marketer prefer to engage (sadly but true).

Is there a reason why?

Personally, I feel this lack of using the technologies we have available to our fullest will come back to haunt us as the digital space (moving forward) offers the best and most effective means to target our customers with the lowest possible cost, to measure and access our customers' preferences. I believe it is only through this insight that the marketing professional can make evolutionary changes to their products and services to match their customers’ changing needs.