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.

Authentic Marketing in Social Media – Paying People to Seed Comments – Trust

In media such as prints, TV ads, consumers will understand and recognise that these are all paid advertisement and they are perfectly fine with that. After all, this fact is known from the outset.

However what if this is not known from the outside? A trend that I see, from conversations with friends, clients and agencies is the notion of seeding conversations in Social Media. For example, firms employ (and pay of course) individuals to post comments on blogs, forums and such as to create a favourable image for the product and hope that it will generate more traffic and of course generate leads.

Is this right? I don’t know – Well for me, I hate to read comments that are not genuine especially if I found out later that this was a paid post or comment – some one who is employed by the company in question. I would lose credibility in the site or for that matter the product – trust is built in incremental steps but once lost, it falls exponentially – isn’t trust (and candidness) the bedrock of social media? Trust is one of the antecedents (drivers) of Word of Mouth (WOM).

From a marketer’s stand point, sure WOM is something they wish to achieve i.e. a result, by seeding comments, would one lose that trust if found out?

But I can understand from the agencies’s point of view is that it generates discussion in the comments section. Afterall social media is interaction and its success stems from conversations.

What are your views, I’m keen to hear them out.

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? 

The Ultimate Guide for Top Internet Marketing Products Exposed

The World Wide Web is filled with a lot of things. But as an Internet Marketer, you should be more particular about your competitors. Everybody wants to have a piece of the action. Everyone wants a share of the market. Obviously if you are not competitive enough you won't be earning much.

Like everything in life in order for it to have your online business succeed you have to invest in it. The basics would be a good domain name, web hosting and a marketing strategy. If you choose well in these aspects, your business could reach great heights.

Not all Domains and Hosting Providers are the same. It is necessary that you get the most reliable web host in order to provide continuous service to your customers. When choosing a web hosting service and domain, be sure to go for a server that can handle your security and expected traffic in the long run.

A good Online Marketing Strategy, on the other hand, could take your business to the top of search engine results for optimum target visits. Being on the top position would drive unique visits to your site, which could translate into sales in the immediate future. 

Your choice of Online Advertising Strategy would put your website in key places of the internet for maximum profits. Advertising is a way to reach out to potential customers. If your ads are on the right spot, you'll get an assurance of reaching your sales quota for the day. 

There are many online marketing products and packages available today to help you in promoting your online business. The problem now is in choosing which one would work for you best. But how would you know that if everybody else says that their marketing product or strategy would work like magic on your business? There's only one sure way to go about it - by consulting authentic customer reviews. 

With a portal that can provide first-hand, accurate information about a certain marketing product that's currently circulating over the internet, you would be able to come up with the best choice for your business. This portal is powered by consumers themselves. Customers, users, or subscribers of a certain online marketing, advertising, or hosting package are then encouraged to add their reviews, recommendations, and feedback - both positive and negative - about their experiences in any of the marketing packages and strategies they have availed of. These would then serve as a guide for everyone, including professionals and novice internet marketers. If there is a new online marketing product recently released, consult customer reviews first before buying it for your own use. This way, you would know if the product could really help you or not. 

Tips To Strengthen Your Online Ad Campaigns

Here I have some tips to strengthen your online ad campaigns without streching too much of your budget. I am sure you have heard about some of the amazing ROI which can be made through PPC advertising on Google, Yahoo and even Bing! I have heard return of up to 300% or even higher with this form of advertising. But there are other ways we can use to trim the fat from our search advertising campaigns.

1. PPC is not for everybody

When PPC works, it really works. But you can lose your entire ad spend if you don't monitor your PPC campaigns properly. As with everything else in business it's always best to be realistic about your chances of success in all your marketing campaigns.

2. Use Web Analytics
It is very important to know how effective each of your keywords and advertisements are really driving traffic to your website. Non-performing keywords should be cut and removed, conversely pay more for your best placements.

3. Website Optimisation

If you do not have a tracking on your website and haven't been optimising your website's ability to convert visitors into buyers, your ads ranking will appear infrequent, buried within search result pages Most importantly you will only be capturing the actual buyers but missed all the potential buyers.

By understanding website optimisation and conversion optimisation, you can easily double the return of all your ad spend. You probably won't be able to compete for the best possible placement for your ads. As a result, your ads will appear infrequently, buried deep within the search results pages.

4. Don't Use Budget Caps

In one of my previous consultancy role, I was given a very strict budget on Google AdWords. I was given a $50 budget clicks per day. On the surface, it was an excellent way to ensure that we did not overspend on the campaign..but I learned to realise that it was a bad idea.

What I was doing was forcing Google AsWords to decide on my behalf about where my ads will appear. For some weird reason, they ended up "optimising" my campaigns so that all my ads appeared in places where it no one seemed to look. The result? I got to stay within my budget but my campaign performed poorly.

So my advice is not to use it. A much better practice is to set your bids conservatively and of course by monitoring your spend.

5. Let Your Competitor Take The Top Spot
Bigger companies and brands tend to be more aggressive about bidding for certain terms. As a result, they bid aggressiely to ensure their ads appear near the top of the search results. I have read somewhere that advertisers appearing at the top of the side search results pay an additional 50% per click, which results in far higher campaign spends for what amounts to a small amount of increamental traffic.

So my advice is to let your competitors to have their spot. By bidding a little lower and spending a lot lesser you will probably drive nearly the same amount of traffic.

That's the 5 tips I have learned and discovered and hope that you find them helpful. Do share with me what other tips you use to further strengthen your site's presence on the internet.

Websites And The Tools You Can Use

Creating a great website and promoting your business via search engine optimisation and social medias can be really interesting. Through my experience in managine websites online, I have realise that its a painstaking learning process to start and market and online business.

I love social media marketing. It's an extension of search engine optimisation and represents a powerful medium - us. I hope that by sharing my journey of discovering SEO and how it works you can shorten your own learning curve.

I am not a slick, savvy e-marketer, but I have learned by eavesdropping, experimenting, googgling, reading and mostly participating in blogs and forums. As I have struggled past the first few mile markers on this apparently endless path, I've frequented wished someone could have guided me. I was looking for a simple, step-by-step, everyday language guidance. So, I have decided to leave a few of those trail markers on my blog to help my readers.

First, a few quick definitions (according to Wikipedia):

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - is the practice of maximizing the volume or quality of traffic to a web site (such as a blog) from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to other forms of search engine marketing ("SEM") which may deal with paid inclusion. The theory is that the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence. As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.
  
• Social Media Marketing (SMM) - is a recent component of organizations' integrated marketing communications plans. Integrated marketing communications is a principle organizations follow to connect with their targeted markets. Integrated marketing communications coordinates the elements of the promotional mix—advertising, personal selling, public relations, publicity, direct marketing, and sales promotion—to produce a customer focused message.[1]  In the traditional marketing communications model, the content, frequency, timing, and medium of communications by the organization is in collaboration with an external agent, i.e. advertising agencies, marketing research firms, and public relations firms.[2]  However, the growth of social media has impacted the way organizations communicate with their customers. In the emergence of Web 2.0, the internet provides a set of tools that allow people to build social and business connections, share information and collaborate on projects online.[3]

• Viral Marketing - The buzzwords  viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing  techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological  and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.[1]  Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages.

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites  by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of search engine optimization, paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.[1][2]. Usage of the term "search engine marketing" has been inconsistent. The trade association Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) includes search engine optimization (SEO), and SEO is also included in the industry definitions of SEM by Forrester Research, eMarketer, Search Engine Watch, and industry expert Danny Sullivan.[3]. However, the New York Times restricts the definition to 'the practice of buying paid search listings'.[4][5]

OK, I can already imagine the old-school, traditional marketers out there shaking their heads. Right, why should we care about social media like Facebook and Blogs? Because according to Social Media Statistics, more than 50 million visitors have logged into Facebook just end of last year. In early this year, more than 10 billion photos appeared on Facebook and photo traffic peaked at more than 300,000 images served per second. So you see now why a little SMM might be a very good idea?

I asked myself, "If I am a customer in search of my product/services, how would I find me?" I started searching Google and there I was. Seeing me on Google was a strange and wonderful experience. Unfortunately, I appeared nowhere near the top of the list and people rarely click beyond the second page of the Google listings. So how to work my way up to the top of the charts?

SEO my friends, SEO. Listening to conversations with my classmates (who mind you are all top of the notch marketers)..I hear "SEO, the strategies, tactics and techniques for driving our business to to tp of the search engines' list".

Honestly, SEO is so simple its almost frightening. Always use a keyword-rich domain where possible. Place your keywords in the top portion of you page and iclude them in th the title of the page. Then, use variations of the keyword phrase naturally through the copy.

Drive more traffic to your site. I installed site meter web analytics on my new website. Then, I set the site meter to e-mail me each week, sending me detailed reports about my visitors, their locations and what they'd viewed.

Blog about your passion, and do it consistently. I discovered Blogger.com, a site owned by Google. Setting up my blog there, I found how frighteningly easy it was to establish a second web presence--three clicks and I was there.  Following the advice of Problogger, I knew I needed to update frequently and stay consistent. I began updating the blog continuously and developed a great little network of loyal readers who became regular visitors. The counters on my site meter increased, and I saw more visitors per day and a longer stay for each visit.

Get connected through social media sites. Everyone in my family has a Facebook, MySpace or Twitter page. From what I've seen, I'd bet even dogs are setting up "walls" on Facebook and are using them to meet French Poodles. Heck when I was a dog owner, I set up a profile for Mikey in Dogbook, in fact I participated in several forums and blogs as Mikey. 

Facebook is more than a big wave; it's an internet tsunami--in a good way. Most important, Facebook gave me a tool for connecting to old friends, and friends of friends, and friends of their friends who used to be friends. You get the idea. A couple of my Facebook pals had downloaded its mobile application to their PDAs, and they got text messages each time I put up a post on my page. So, I added Facebook posts to my daily to-do list. Right after I blog, I post something on Twitter and Facebook. They both alert my multiple networks that there's something exciting happening in my world.

Stay in Touch. Be helpful, and give simple but useful answers. Twitter asks you simply, "What are you doing?"  I keep things fresh at the website and Twitter when I can. Twitter also helps me begin word-of-mouth promotions--the internet equivalent of whispering, "Hey, have you heard . . . ?"

Update or redesign your original website to include tantalizing new features. The word-of-mouth concept posed a tiny little conundrum: Whispering campaigns require salacious little secrets. If there's no sensational, useful content that's helpful or interesting, there's really no point in whispering. Nobody wants to know that you just had lunch. Therefore, I found myself scratching my head and wondering how to create something interesting and useful. For me, video was the answer, and a simple one, too. Try animoto.com, and you'll see what I mean about video creation being easy. You can upload it directly to YouTube, adding more content to your channel; JingProject.com and ScreenToaster.com are a little more work, but very powerful. They're tools to create new videos of your desktop tutorials, presentations and personal videos.

Obviously, the internet gives us a lot more tools for inviting and engaging traffic, but all our technological sophistication must not carry us too far away from the basics: People still want good products at fair prices, delivered by trustworthy and charming characters who know their stuff and how it works.

What is an RSS Aggregator or an RSS Reader?

I keep seeing and hearing about RSS, XMS and RSS feeds. My husband who is also our Lead Developer once explained to me what it is. But honestly, as a marketer in this digital arena I barely have a clue of what they are. So I decided to do some research on it.

Ain’t jargon fun? RSS really means Really Simple Syndication and it’s a simple data-only version of a web page or what they call a web log. Now, why is this interesting? Because apparently it’s then easy to write programs which we can track XML formatted data stream and let you know when there’s a new material added to the site.

The problem is, I don't want to check 100 RSS feeds any more than I want to visit 100 Web sites every day, and that's where aggregators come in. Whether they're standalone programs, plug-ins for your favourite Web browser or email program, or Web-based services, RSS aggregators remember your subscription list, check each site on a periodic basis, and alert you to any new articles that have been published.

If you’re not thinking, wow this is cool then you are spending too much time visiting web sites! To scan headlines of just a dozen sites on an hourly basis would probably be a full time job and if you need to need to keep abreast of your industry, as I do, then you wouldn’t have any time to actually do anything else.

There are a few programs you can download that are RSS aggregators (or RSS readers, basically synonymous) for Windows and MAC. A few of the most popular are FeedReader for Windows, NetNewWire for MACs.

Don't like having yet another application running? Always a short cut with technologies. Apparently you can graft RSS capabilities into your Web browser (or run Firefox or Safari / which have elegant built- in RSS capabilities) or your email program.
 
Finally, you can subscribe to an RSS aggregator Web service which gives you a custom Web page that includes the newest information from your hand-picked RSS feeds.