The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

You know a strong call to action is a very important part of your sales literature. If you don’t ask your prospect to take action, they might just sit and listen and not take any action. You have to let them know what you want them to do and when to do it.

Here are 5 dynamic ways to use a good call to action.

1. Your landing pages – Here’s an obvious one. You have a great sales page that describes your product well, includes photos and maybe even a video. But does it have a call to action? A strong call to action will increase conversions.
2. Anchor text – Does your anchor text motivate people to click or does it just provide some keyword-based bland text for SEO effect? Nothing wrong with SEO, but give it a call to action.
3. Meta descriptions – Your meta descriptions will appear in the SERPs as search snippets. Do they motivate searchers to click on your page? If they were strong calls to action they would.
4. Your Facebook posts – It’s great that you use Facebook as much as you do, but do any of your posts include a call to action? Make people click the link. Tell them to do it.
5. Your tweets – There’s not a lot of room for error on Twitter, but one way that many marketers miss opportunities is to include a link without a strong call to action.
6. Your PPC ads – Want people to click your ads? Give them a strong call to action and they will click all day long.

Take control of your online marketing with calls to action. They get people where you want them.

Some Internet marketing tactics are timeless – they will always work. You may do them poorly and in that case they may not work. But if you do them well, then they will work.

Here are 6 Internet marketing tactics that worked when they were first used, work today, and will work until the technology on which they are based dies.

1. E-mail marketing – Whether you send newsletters, e-brochures, or product giveaway postcards, e-mail marketing is a marketing tactic that simply works. Anyone can do it.
2. Blogging – Blogging not only is a great marketing tactic, it’s good for SEO. That may be why it will always work.
3. Social networking – Social networking can take many forms. In the past it was known as forum marketing or bulletin boards. Today, it’s just simply social networking. But no matter the form, if it involves socializing (even online), then it will work. Networking is networking.
4. Word of mouth – Word of mouth always works. Online and off line. Online, word of mouth takes shape in the share icons you put on your pages. You do put them on your web pages, don’t you?
5. Visual imagery – TV advertising is still alive and well. Online, it’s called video marketing. Yes, it works just as well as TV advertising.
6. Paid advertising – Free advertising is great, but it may or may not work depending on the venue. Paid advertising works. Off line, print newspapers and magazines offer display ads for your dollars and boy do they work. Online, PPC is the best paid advertising you can get. It’s the equivalent of your hometown newspaper ad.

There’s no question about it. These online marketing tactics work. They always have and they always will.

Is it getting more difficult to market a business online? I can see how a business owner would think so. There is so much to think about. You have to build a website, then you have to promote your website. You have to come up with a search engine marketing strategy, perhaps a pay-per-click advertising strategy, and put together a social media marketing plan. You may need a video marketing plan, an e-mail marketing plan, and even a display advertising plan in some niches. There really is a lot to think about.

While there is a lot to think about when you embark upon an Internet marketing venture, it isn’t as difficult as it seems. There are some things that are actually easier online than off line. For instance, there is a lot that you can measure online that measuring off line is unheard of.

Still, it helps to have a plan.

A good Internet marketing plan starts with research. In your research you should include some time to study your competition. Learn what the movers in your niche are up to. Not that you’ll follow them, but it helps to know what others have done and are doing in your industry. You may find some things that you like that you want to emulate while tossing out other strategies that don’t fit in with your goals and mission.

When you start with research you will eliminate a lot of your options. Taking items off the table that don’t belong there is a good way to narrow your focus and research can help you do that. Build your online marketing plan on solid research and it gets easier. A lot easier in most cases.

What will Internet marketing look like in 2032, twenty years from now? Care to take a guess?

If you look at the history of Internet marketing from the beginning of the World Wide Web until now, it’s very interesting how we have progressed to the point that we have.

• 1990 – Birth of the World Wide Web including browsers and hypertext, online bulletin boards are very popular communication channels
• 1993 – Excite, the world’s first search engine, was created
• 1994 – AltaVista was created and later would become the world’s first major search engine; Yahoo! became the first powerhouse Web directory
• 1995 – GeoCities launched, becomes the first successful online community; webrings begin to rise in popularity
• 1997 – SixDegrees is the first official social network
• 1998 – Google was born, the first search engine to analyze back links
• 1999 – Overture became the first company to offer pay per click advertising; Blogger.com launches
• 2000 – Google enters PPC market with Google AdWords
• 2003 – Google AdSense program starts, increasing Google’s hold on the PPC market; LinkedIn and MySpace both launch
• 2004 – Facebook is created
• 2005 – YouTube launches; Google introduces personalized search
• 2006 – MicroSoft LiveSearc started; Twitter launches
• 2007 – Mobile marketing starts to pick up
• 2008 – Facebook becomes most popular social network
• 2009 – LiveSearch rebrands, becomes Bing; Google rolls out personalized search for logged out users
• 2010 – Local search becomes more important
• 2011 – Google+ launches, Google proclaims it is the future of the search engine’s search and social product

This is a very sketchy history of Internet marketing, but it can shed some light on the direction that online marketing is going. More personal, more local, more social, more mobile, and incorporating more video and visual results. So what will all of that look like in 2032?

Truthfully, it’s anybody’s guess, but if I had to hazard a guess I would say that all of these components of search will be more integrated and more sophisticated. Are you preparing your company to make the most of your opportunities in each of these online marketing channels?

Recent news shows that mobile PPC is on the rise. In fact, it’s up to 25% of all pay-per-click advertising.

The good news is that click rates are high. People viewing PPC ads on their smartphones and tablets are clicking on ads. Here’s the bad news: Conversion rates are lower for mobile phones.

OK, I’ll buy Cynthia Boris’s argument. Mobile phone users are on the run, so when they see an ad and click through and want to make a purchase, they just visit the store instead and make the purchase in store. PC users, on the other hand, make the purchase online. Makes a lot of sense.

But let’s think about the future. Smartphones are still new. What will mobile advertising be like in 10 years when everyone has a smartphone?

My guess is that mobile PPC will be as popular and as profitable as PPC has ever been. I also think that conversion rates will be higher. Why? It’s likely that the mobile phone will be most people’s primary telecommunications device. Land lines will be gone.

If that happens, more people will use their phones for web browsing and shopping. They’ll likely make more purchases through their phone as well – particularly books, music, and video purchases. The same with the tablet. However, unlike the PC, people will carry their tablet with them and use it for web browsing and shopping while sitting stationary at the bus station, in the library, in the coffee shop, or even while sitting in their weekly business meeting.

Mobile PPC is on the rise along with smartphone and tablet use. It’s the wave of the future. You might as well get in now while click prices are low.

There are a ton of Internet marketing tactics and strategies and more developing all the time, but they’re not all effective. The ones that are can take a while to produce benefits. PPC is the big exception.

Pay per click advertising is to the Internet what display advertising was to newspapers. You can pay for the right ad in the right paper and get it in front of the right audience. When you do, it’s pure gold.

News ads drove gobs and gobs of traffic to brick and mortar businesses because at its peak everyone in a community read the paper. The ad was seen by a large cross-section of community members. It was a numbers game, and the businesses who worked the numbers got paid handsomely. So too is PPC.

With pay per click advertising, you can write your ad, optimize it for your landing page, and activate it and get sales the same day. That’s not as likely with search engine optimization and social media.

Why is it likely with PPC?

Because 20% of search engine results pages traffic clicks on the PPC ads. If 1 million people search for a particular item that you have and you are advertising it through PPC, that 200,000 clicks. Divide that by the 5 top positions and there’s a potential 40,000 clicks for you.

Let’s say you only get 10,000 click-throughs. If 5% of them convert, that’s 500 new sales.

Your PPC ads go live the very day you create them. That means people will see them within minutes. If your landing page is optimized well and has a strong call to action, you’ll sales. You could see them today.

If you don’t have a ghostwriter on your team, then you should probably consider one. A ghostwriter – especially if you don’t have the writing skills yourself – can take your business to all new heights. The tasks that one good ghostwriter can handle are legion. Here’s a short list just off the top of my head:

• Write your daily blog posts. This is important. Having a daily blog is a vital part of any online business.
• Manage your social media campaigns. You’ve got to promote those blog posts somehow. Your ghostwriter will be instrumental in pushing them out to the popular social media sites.
• Write your SEO content. Make sure your ghostwriter is well-versed in SEO tactics. A good copywriter with a working knowledge of SEO is worth his weight in gold.
• Produce your weekly newsletter. You should have an electronic newsletter to help you build relationships with your clientele. A good ghostwriter can help you with that too.
• Write your PPC ads. A writer should be able to write ads with a strong call to action. If you run PPC campaigns, you need a good ghostwriter.
• Article marketing. This includes writing and submitting articles to directories as well as writing guest blog posts on occasion.
• Link building. Since your ghostwriter knows SEO and can write articles, have him manage your link building campaigns.

There really is no limit to what a good ghostwriter can do for your business. If you are serious about marketing your company online, a ghostwriter can be a lot of help.

One topic that doesn’t get discussed a lot among Internet marketers is time management. Whether the marketer is a search engine optimizer, a social media marketing professional, a PPC expert, a video marketer, a hybrid of these, or something else entirely, Internet marketing professionals tend to talk about the concepts of their specialty, but not time management.

Today I’m going to discuss some time management principles that you can implement as you go about managing your marketing activities online.

The first principle I’d like to discuss is the principle of like activities. These are activities that you perform daily that can be fit into a tidy little group.

For instance, your social media management activities. If you have a Twitter account, a Facebook account, and a LinkedIn account and you have a tendency to check in with each service every day, make a point to check in on each service at the same time every day. Also, limit yourself to no more than 15 or 20 minutes for each service. This way, you can easily manage your activities and you don’t get caught in the “I’m here all day” syndrome.

Use the same principle for each of your other marketing activities. Pick a time of the day that you write your articles and do it the same time each day. The same goes for blogging.

Of course, we all know that things pop up during the day that take us away from our scheduled activities. You can easily get overrun with events. What should you do if a phone call takes you away from your planned activities and gets you sidetracked? How do you get back on track?

The important thing is to remain diligent. That two hour “must take” phone call took you away from several important activities. You still need to get those things done. Take time out to perform those activities you missed on account of the “wrench” in your schedule, but truncate the time you spend on them. Instead of 20 minutes, only spend 10 minutes in each social media site. Instead of spending one hour blogging as you normally would, take thirty minutes to kick out a quick blog post and get on with other business.

With these time management tips you should be able to manage your Internet marketing activities much more effectively.

For the longest time now just about anyone you talked to in SEO circles would sing the praises of the No. 1 position in search results. But have you noticed that most PPC specialists – at least the ones who are worth their weight in salt – prefer to get their clients No. 2, 3, or 4 positions in the rankings? Why is that?

The truth is, No. 1 positions are the most clicked-on positions. That’s true for PPC and organic search listings. But those are not the most profitable positions.

The most profitable positions are the ones just below the No. 1 position. Why is that?

What most people don’t realize is that most searchers will click on that No. 1 position, but if it isn’t what they were looking for, then they hit the Back button and click on another search result. SEOs know this. Clients don’t necessarily know this. So everyone is scrambling to get that No. 1 position.

There’s nothing wrong with being No. 1. But you should be seeking to be No. 1 for the right search queries. What questions does your website answer? Those are the key terms you should seek No. 1 rankings for.

SEO results fluctuate. But they are also much more personal. Google now provides videos, images, and personalized results based on who your Google+ friends are your past search history. Your search results are not my search results. That makes the No. 1 position just about unattainable. Trying to get there is an exercise in absurdity.

The job for search engine marketers in today’s search climate is to produce the best content and promote it in the best places. Rankings won’t cure all your ills.

Are you hovering over your pay-per-click marketing CTR numbers daily, expecting them to change – maybe even go up? If so, you could be wasting your time.

It’s not that CTR isn’t important. Rather, it’s just that ROI is more important. After all, what difference does it make if your click-through rate is sky high if your conversion rate is below the floor? Return on investment is the measure of your success. It’s how much money you put in your pocket.

There are two ways to affect your ROI. Pay less or make more. Do both and you increase your ROI.

But the key is to do all the right things with the money that you do invest in PPC marketing. Simply writing ads and turning them on isn’t enough. You have to manage them, and that includes logging into your PPC accounts daily. There’s tweaking that needs to be done.

Bidding on your keywords is good, but are you bidding on keywords that you shouldn’t even be targeting? Prune your keyword list down to target only the most important keywords – the ones that will return a profit.

And something else that many PPC advertisers overlook is the value of a good landing page. Does your landing page need to be optimized? Are there elements on your page that don’t need to be there? If it isn’t closing sales from the traffic your ads are sending, then it isn’t doing its job and it’s costing you in terms of ROI. Optimize that landing page.

Instead of focusing on CTR, turn your eye toward ROI and improve your PPC marketing.

We’re continuing to deliver the latest news on Google+ developments and here’s another reason you should join the service. If you are a PPC advertiser on Google’s AdWords platform, then you can see social annotations if you turn them on.

I believe social annotations are going to become a key metric for a lot of online marketers. They could very well be a major part of your PPC campaigns going forward, and it’s real easy to see why.

Dan Friedman of Google’s Inside AdWords Crew says that 71% of shoppers online make decisions based on the recommendations of their friends and family. If that’s true, then you give your fans every opportunity to +1 your content, PPC ads included. When a searcher calls up a search results page and sees that their friends have +1ed your ads, they’ll either +1 it themselves or click on the link. It could increase the effectiveness of your advertising.

At the very least, you’ll have a key metric to judge the effectiveness of your advertising. Getting tons of +1s? Then you’re making an impact. Getting +1s but no click-throughs? You can evaluate the reasons why. Getting +1s and click-throughs but no conversions? Check your landing page.

Social annotations are here. Now it’s time to try them.

You’ve likely heard that content is king. And that’s true, if you are talking about website marketing strategies. Nothing beats content. But PPC is king in terms of online marketing strategies.

Pay per click marketing wins hands down for a number of reasons even though it costs you money.

For starters, PPC allows you to get instant results. Write your ad and get it live today, you can actually see click throughs today and marry those up with conversions. No other online marketing strategy has that potential. If you build a website, you’ll have to get it indexed. There’s no guarantee that will happen in one day.

Social media can be effective marketing, but it likely will take you some time since you have to build up a following, build trust, and develop a track record. That takes time.

Video marketing can also be effective. Again, the chances that you can produce a video, get it online, and see results in one day are pretty phenomenal. It can happen, but not likely.

Other online marketing strategies show similar potential. You may get better results long term from SEO, social media and video marketing, but only PPC promises same-day results. And that’s just one reason PPC is king. There are others.

The key to a successful PPC campaign is in your landing page. That’s true whether you are talking about driving traffic to increase your e-mail subscriptions or to sell your downloads. Pay-per-click advertising is only successful if you can get traffic to your landing page and then convert that traffic with a good call to action.

The components to a successful PPC campaign are:

• Your PPC ad headline
• Your PPC ad text
• Your landing page

All three of these components have to add up and when they do you’ll see your conversions increase.

Let’s start with your ad’s headline. It’s got to be an attention grabber. Optimize it with the correct keyword so that it appears on the correct search results page, then make sure it gets the attention of your prospect.

The ad text itself is what will get your prospect to click through to your landing.

But it’s the landing page itself that will close the sale, or get the subscription. It doesn’t have to be long. Sell the benefits, not the features. In other words, include your opt-in box in a prominent location on the page and tell your reader concisely why they should opt in to your newsletter or e-mail list.

When it comes to PPC advertising, sell the benefits and you’ll see your conversions increase.

Online marketing is becoming less and less about SEO all the time. That doesn’t mean you should give up on SEO. What I’m really saying is that SEO is not the be all-end all of Internet marketing.

In the early days of online marketing, you had directories and search engines. There were these things called web rings, which on one uses any more. And there were display ads and articles, which was mostly about SEO. But that’s about it.

Around 1998, things began to change. Google was born. SEO took on greater prominence – for about five years.

In 2003, things began to change again. Blogs were becoming popular, social media was gaining ground, and PPC was big and strong. PPC was not about SEO It was about reaching your target market quickly and effectively. It still is.

But in the last couple of years we’ve seen the growth of mobile apps, QR codes, e-book readers, and a number of other emerging technologies that threaten to expand the Internet marketer’s reach outside of traditional online strategies like SEO, link building and social media. And I believe these opportunities are going to grow more prominent.

When it comes to online marketing, focus on what’s important for reaching your target market. SEO is important, but it’s one channel. Don’t get wrapped around a tree looking for the forest.

Is there ever a time when you should stop your PPC campaign? Absolutely. But when is that time?

Obviously, you don’t want to stop something that is working. So if you have a PPC campaign that is bringing you an ROI, then that’s not a campaign you want to stop. But you do want to stop those campaigns that are not working.

How long should you let your pay per click campaigns go before you decide to stop them? You don’t want them to go on too long.

It depends on how much money you have invested, but if you aren’t experiencing enough click throughs or the click throughs you are getting aren’t converting, then that’s when you want to put your PPC ads on pause and redirect your advertising efforts.

CTR is an important metric. How many click throughs is enough? It’s different for every campaign, but if your click throughs don’t match your expectations, then it’s time to find out why. You can pause your campaign long enough to tweak your ads and see if that increases your CTR.

Conversion rate is another problem. If your PPC ads aren’t converting, it’s likely your landing pages. Have you tested them? If not, then you should pause your PPC campaign and engage in a little multivariate testing of your landing pages. Find out what works, then restart your pay per click campaigns when you have the kinks worked out.

Here’s a question for you: What’s killing e-mail marketing?

Is it PPC? Search engine optimization? Video marketing? Social media?

Answer: None of the above! E-mail isn’t dying.

It’s fashionable to proclaim the death of old media when new media arrives. Those who remember the early advent of DVDs will remember how they were supposed to kill the movie theater. But the box office is still going strong and some of the biggest box office openings in history have occurred after DVDs.

The Internet hasn’t killed radio or TV. Search didn’t kill directories. Social media didn’t kill search. Nor will it, or anything else, kill e-mail marketing.

E-mail is a private space that people will allow you to enter if you’ve built their trust. You can use other media – search, social media, and videos – to build that trust. Then you use your website to get people to give your their private e-mail address, which you can then use to send them invitations and marketing messages that close the sale or seal the deal. E-mail is where the transaction is solidified.

E-mail marketing is far from dead. The best Internet marketers are using it to make their dough. You should too.

Domain Sherpa conducted a study involving generic domain names and non-generic domain names on pay-per-click advertising. Their conclusion was that generic domain names were better for PPC advertising than non-generic domain names.

Heck, we could have told you that.

Generic domain names are not only good for PPC, they’re also good for organic search. The reason is real simple.

Searchers perceive generic domain names to have more credibility in the search results. Taking the divorce lawyer example provided in Domain Sherpa’s article, would you rather sit down with an attorney from DivorceLawyer.com or one from VladimerLaw.com?

For some reason, DivorceLawyer.com carries more points in terms of credibility and reputation when conducting a search at one of the search engines. That’s because the searcher is looking for a divorce lawyer. Unless that searcher is searching specifically for a brand name, no single brand is going to stand out as most credible in a generic search for a service.

That’s why generic domain names are preferred for SEO and PPC by most search engine optimization experts.

I think generic domain names work better for SEO as well, for similar reasons. It’s a matter of credibility where the generic search is concerned. When planning your next online marketing plan, take that into consideration.

The best online marketers have known for at least six years how to use pay-per-click advertising to improve their organic search rankings. Here are 4 ways you can use PPC to make your organic search marketing more effective:

• Keyword Research – One of the most popular ways that PPC advertisers use their ads is to test new keywords. If you achieve high click-throughs on your keywords, then they should also be good for your organic search campaigns.
• Testing Meta Descriptions – If the ad text in your ad is effective, you’ll get more click throughs. You can use that same text for your meta descriptions, however, the ad text is limited to 70 words. The best meta descriptions employ 80-150 words so you might want to add a little bit more to those when you convert them.
• Testing Page Titles - If your PPC ads generate activity, then you can re-use your PPC ad titles for your web page titles as well.
• Testing Landing Pages – PPC is perfect for testing new landing pages. Do they convert? If they won’t convert for PPC, then they won’t convert for organic search either. Test them with PPC, tweak them, then use them for organic search.

Pay per click advertising offers the perfect opportunity to test for organic search. Don’t let that opportunity slip away.

Many small business owners are beginning to see the value in Facebook ads. There are plenty of reasons why Facebook ads can be better for marketing your small business than PPC. One reason is because of the better features for targeted marketing. You can actually narrow your Facebook ads down to more focused targeting.

You can also get creative with your Facebook ad targeting. Much more creative than with traditional PPC.

Here are five tips for making the most of your Facebook advertising, as shared by this article.

1. Set your goals and plan. You won’t be very effective, with Facebook ads or PPC, if you don’t know what you want to achieve.
2. Use creative targeting tactics. One example is to use your Facebook ad to say “Happy Birthday” to prospects a few days before their birthday. Try that with PPC!
3. Choose text and graphics that compliment each other. This is very important and could increase your click-throughs tremendously.
4. Create and test multiple ads. Instead of just creating one ad and going with it, do some multivariate testing with more than one ad.
5. Be ready to receive the traffic. Make sure your Facebook page is updated and ready to handle the traffic you’ll get from your ads.

Facebook ads are a relatively new opportunity in PPC. Make them work for you.

Is your business slow? What do you do to drum up new business in your down times? When the market slows down and you have a deficit in customer relations, do you get proactive? Do you spend money? Here are five ways to turn your slow business into a thriving business during any economic circumstances.

1. Build a new website. There’s nothing that says you should stick with one website. If you have a business with clearly defined multiple markets, build a website for each market. When your business slows down is a good time to start planning for the next wave or upsurge. Put your extra time into something productive.
2. Initiate a PPC campaign. Many small business owners cut back on the marketing budget when business is slow. That’s when you should step up your marketing efforts. PPC is the perfect vehicle since you don’t pay for a click until after you receive it.
3. Make a video. Since you have some free time on your hands, why not create a video. You can put it on your website or distribute it through YouTube and other video marketing channels.
4. Connect with a new audience. Social media engagement can be time consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. In truth, you should be engaged through social media even when your business isn’t slow, but what better time to get engaged than when things slow down?
5. Refine your SEO. You can always find a way to improve your search engine rankings. Prowl your website for new SEO opportunities, and take them.

Instead of fretting about your business being slow, take action. Find new opportunities to connect to old customers or go out and find new ones.