Want More Paid Search Web Traffic? Play Dead.

June 17, 2008 by · 1 Comment

The first thing journalism majors are taught in college is how to write an obituary.  It’s true!  Writing an obituary involves thinking about the highlights of the subject’s life from beginning to end, and writing about it in an extremely concise manner.  This exercise disciplines the writer to focus on what’s most important, and to trim away the fat.

The same could be said for writing Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads in Google and Yahoo.  When writing your ads, it’s vital to stay focused on the highlights of your product or service that are most appealing to your target Web audience …the meat and potatoes, if you will.

Too many times, we see in-house folks who manage their company’s PPC campaigns using branded product names and internal “lingo” in their writing, thinking that their ads have universal appeal and will make sense to everyone.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, ads need to be constantly honed and perfected in order to achieve [Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Online Marketing, PPC ·

Remember Ad Testing?? Might be Time to Remind Yourself…

June 5, 2008 by · Leave a Comment

We’ve spilled a lot of ink recently over the desirability of cranking up your online marketing aggressiveness during uncertain or shrinking economic times (see for example our blog posts, “How a Website Makeover Can Help “Recession-Proof” Your Company” and “Recession, Reshmession… Don’t Let the Headlines Scare Your Company into its Own Private Downturn”).  Such aggressiveness helps offset the greater difficulty of finding and closing prospects, who can be expected to be more cautious in these times;  and it will protect your market share …and maybe increase it, if at least some of your competitors are too timid to match your aggressiveness.

Of course, it’s not a time to simply throw money at the problem;  it’s much better to first ensure that every dollar is working as hard as possible for your B2B.  And with PPC, that means… [Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Lead Generation, Online Marketing, PPC, Search Engine Marketing ·

Closing the Loop: How To Truly Measure Your e-ROI

February 26, 2008 by · Leave a Comment

Getting a handle on the ROI of your e-marketing is really pretty simple …and because it can be all-electronic, it involves a lot less guesswork or assumptions than measuring traditional marketing elements like direct mail or space advertising.

Let’s look at a fictional – but fairly typical – B2B example: Foobar Enterprise Software. Foobar’s flagship product has an average initial-order value of $150,000. As a young company in a (so far) not overly competitive space, they enjoy a 20% profit margin; so each sale nets them $30,000. [Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Lead Generation, Online Marketing, PPC, Search Engine Marketing ·

Microsoft’s Yahoo Bid Reveals Confidence in Online Spending Growth

February 13, 2008 by · Leave a Comment

Of course, it’s great sport to debate the strategy behind Microsoft’s proposed mega-gamble on Yahoo, and whether it might actually pan out. What’s clearly not debatable, though, is that Microsoft’s 40+ billion chips on the table represent a stunning affirmation of the probable future growth of online advertising …especially since we can be certain that some pretty sharp pencils were being wielded in Redmond.

Industry experts weigh in
eMagine wasn’t at all surprised at this view of online’s likely growth. Neither were the leading industry analysts and observers interviewed by the folks at msnbc.com for their worthwhile article on this transaction, “Online advertising spending will keep growing”. Here are some of their more revealing comments… [Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Online Marketing, PPC, Search Engine Marketing ·

Why it Usually Makes Sense to Outsource Your SEM (SEO & PPC)

January 24, 2008 by · 1 Comment

Many B2Bs consider it some sort of badge of honor to “bring their search engine marketing (SEM) in-house” …as though it were a checkmark item on some master business goal sheet. But if your business is drug discovery, or developing test-suite generation software for SQA, or anything not intimately related to search engines – and if your company isn’t yet large enough to tolerate some organizational flab – then doing SEM in-house is generally not a goal worth pursuing; and here’s why.

First – the problems with in-house SEM
Cost. Experienced SEM specialists are fairly expensive …if you can find one: in a recent MarketingSherpa survey of marketers that do SEM in-house, 20-30% of respondents report that is very difficult to find and hire qualified candidates. You’d also better have something else appropriate to their skill set for that person to do: having a top-flight SEM specialist take care of only one website is a lot like driving your Ferrari the five blocks to the grocery store. [Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, PPC, Search Engine Marketing, Traffic Generation ·

Search Engine Marketing No Stranger to Top Execs

January 8, 2008 by · Leave a Comment

ClickZ’s Kevin Newcomb has provided a nice summary of early results from the annual search market survey by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO).

One of the more dramatic year-to-year changes involves the attention being given to search marketing by senior executives. In the 2005 survey, under half of senior management respondents said they were either moderately or very involved in SEM programs; in the 2006 survey, that number leaped to 90 percent.

“Online spending is reaching record levels. Smart senior management is seeing that search engine marketing is no longer a minority player. [Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Online Marketing, PPC, Search Engine Marketing ·

Are You Missing One of the Best Deals in Marketing?

November 16, 2007 by · Leave a Comment

What is PPC?
On a search engine’s results page there are two kinds of listings, organic and sponsored.  Sponsored or paid listings are (somewhat) conspicuously identified at the top and/or right-hand side of the engine’s results pages.  Organic listings occur naturally, while sponsored or paid listings are bid on by advertisers.  Advertisers decide how much they are willing to pay for these ads, and they pay for the ads only when a visitor clicks on the ad …hence the name Pay Per Click (PPC).

Why should you be using PPC?
Well, because as our headline said… it’s one of the most significant and cost-effective advertising innovations, ever.  If you haven’t at least experimented with Pay Per Click, you may literally be handing low-cost, high-quality leads to your competitors. [Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Online Marketing, PPC, Search Engine Marketing ·
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