The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

Back to metrics again, it’s vitally important that you measure what you want to control. To that end, perhaps the most important business metric you should be concerned with, and one which you have a fair amount of control over, is the cost of acquisition for each customer.

Whether you market your products and service through PPC, social media, search marketing, other, or a combination of above, you should keep tabs on what it costs to get a new customer. If you don’t know that, you don’t know whether you are earning a profit or not.

By running a few tests you can determine the base cost of a new customer. This is easy to do with pay per click advertising.

After you have determined the base cost of a new customer, you can then adjust that as needed by tweaking your online marketing initiatives. You can downgrade your PPC campaigns to control costs, increase the amount of time you spend on social media, or increase your SEO efforts.

Keep in mind that customer acquisition cost is a one-time event. After you have gained a new customer you then have to expend your resources to keep him. That’s a different cost altogether, and it’s cheaper and easier to keep a customer than acquire a new one.

So keep an eye on the cost of obtaining a new customer. It’s your most important business metric.

Many small business owners new to search engine optimization and online marketing wonder why it takes so long to see results. There are a number of reasons why SEO takes time, but it’s not just SEO. PPC often requires several weeks, or months, as well. But why?

In a word, it’s all about the competition. No matter what niche you are in, if you are just getting started, then you have an uphill climb.

There are likely other businesses who have established an online presence in your niche. For every keyword you are targeting in the search results, you should expect a handful of competitors to already have a head start. Add that to the expectations of the search engines regarding quality content and you have a recipe for success or disaster depending on your implementation.

Google favors sites with age. That means that your new website is at a distinct disadvantage where search engine rankings come into play. That’s not to say you can’t achieve respectable rankings. You just have to work harder.

Recent updates in search engine ranking factors also come into play. Now more than ever, the search engines are looking for high quality content. Businesses new to online marketing generally have a learning curve. Your first attempts at creating high quality content will likely not work in your favor – until you learn what “high quality” actually means for online content.

In a word, you have to pay your dues. It can often be a lot easier to achieve high rankings out of the gate by hiring a professional content service that has a track record in working with businesses like yours.

SEOmoz has an interesting article about SEO insights garnered from a study on pay per click advertising.

I won’t necessarily endorse everything in the article, but I think you can gain some insight into SEO by studying PPC advertising habits, and click-throughs to some extent. For starters, let’s take a look at the top 10 industries by average PPC cost-per-click:

1. Finance
2. Jobs & Education
3. Business/Industrial
4. Computers & Electronics
5. Internet/Telecom
6. Beauty & Fitness
7. Automobiles
8. Home & Garden
9. Travel
10. Shopping

Interestingly, in each of these industries, retargeting is proving to be very effective. Retargeting is the act of using PPC to reach the same market prospects across the Google Display Network as you reach in the Google SERPs. In other words, if you advertise using PPC and run your ads on network websites signed on to Google AdSense, you’ll be more effective with your SEO and your PPC efforts.

Mobile PPC Not As Effective As Mobile SEO

Another thing you should know is that mobile users don’t click on PPC ads as often. That’s because they are on the go and don’t take the time to click on ads. If they’re searching for something, however, they will use the organic search option. Mobile search is primarily about organic SEO. This is a golden opportunity for search marketers, especially where local search and mobile search meet.

Use PPC For Keyword Research

Finally, and we’ve known this for years, you can use pay per click advertising to test your keywords for organic search. If you are getting good click-throughs that convert in your PPC campaigns, that can also translate into excellent search positioning in the organic search space.

Savvy online marketers look at SEO and PPC as complimentary marketing channels, not competing ones.

Last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that there are now 1 billion people on Facebook. 1 billion. That’s 1/7th of the world’s population. And it continues to grow.

As more and more people come online, the number of people using Facebook will also grow. There are an estimated 2.5 billion people online around the world right now. So 1/5th of that number are also using Facebook. That’s a big pool of people that could potentially see your Facebook page or interact with you in some way through Facebook.

Is it any wonder then that brand pages are as popular as they are? If you’ve wondered why big brands are taking to Facebook, there’s your clue. There are a lot of potential customers there.

But that’s true for Mom & Pop as much as it is for McDonald’s or any of the world’s largest brand names. Put your business online and give it a Facebook presence. This is the future of marketing.

But it’s not enough to simply add a Facebook page. What you really want to do is market that page, and there’s more to it than simply joining Facebook and building a brand page. Link to your page from your blog or website. Promote your page through other social media outlets. If you do any paid advertising, then drive traffic to your page through Google AdWords or Facebook’s own paid advertising model.

People are looking at brand pages. Don’t let them down.

Television advertising can get expensive. If you have a larger competitor that is using TV advertising and you want a way to nose in on his turf and siphon away a little business, you can do that with a surreptitious PPC campaign targeting keywords that your competitor is using in his TV ads.

So, how do you do that exactly?

What you want to focus on are brand-specific keywords related to your competition and the products they are promoting on TV. This works especially well if your competitor is promoting a special. Then you can use PPC to undercut that special.

For instance, let’s say your competitor is marketing helium balloons at a 20% discount for customers who buy them by the dozen. The normal price is $3 per balloon, but if the customer buys 12, then it’s $28.80. You can have a PPC campaign that targets your competitor’s brand name, the name of any particular products on sale, etc. Of course, target the generic keywords as well.

People generally search for brand names and product names after they see TV commercials. If you get people clicking on your ads with an offer that undercuts your competition – for example, you could offer 12 helium balloons for $26.00 – then you could siphon away some of that traffic.

It’s a sneaky tactic, but it works like a charm.

Many PPC advertisers have the false belief that quality score is all about click-through rates (CTR). That’s a dangerous belief because, first, it isn’t true, and secondly, if you focus entirely on CTR, then you’ll miss out on great PPC opportunities by not paying attention to other important details.

While Google doesn’t share its PPC algorithm and the factors it deems important for a good quality score, there are some very good reasons for believing that CTR is not the brass ring.

I’m not saying CTR isn’t important. I’m simply saying it isn’t the sole determinant of a high quality score. Other factors like landing page experience and load time, keyword groupings, and ad text also bear on the quality score of your PPC ads.

Google is very concerned about landing page load time. That’s why you can now measure your load time in Google Analytics. If it weren’t important, there’d be no way to measure it. You want to make sure that your landing page loads fast. Beyond that, you also want to make sure it is well optimized and that it answers the questions your visitors have when clicking on your PPC ads.

The ad itself is just as important. If your ad text is misleading or not relevant to the landing page, that will detract from your quality score.

Finally, if you have a lot of non-relevant keywords in your keyword group, that will also affect your PPC quality score. So don’t get wrapped around the axle on CTR. It’s important, but not all-important.

Most businesses approach an online marketing company with a general question like, “what kind of marketing should I do online and what does it cost?”

If an online marketing company answers that question directly, they’re probably not the company you want to go with. The sad fact of the matter is you can’t really define your online marketing strategy unless you define your budget first. Why is that?

Online marketing has blossomed into many different sub-niches. You can use videos online, pay-per-click marketing, social media, search engine optimization strategies, mobile marketing, and the list goes on. Each one of these online marketing channels requires a specialist to put together a strategy that has a remote chance of success. That’s because they’ve each developed into a unique discipline.

You can easily spend $1,000 on marketing your business online and barely touch the tip of the iceberg in terms of opportunities. So you have to narrow your scope to determine what are the best opportunities for your business.

How you spend $300 in PPC is very different in how you can spend the same amount of money on social media. If that’s your monthly budget, then you can’t do both very effectively.

By setting your online budget first, you automatically eliminate certain online marketing channels because you can only do so many videos for $500. That money might be better spent pursuing a channel that allows you to reach your target audience with many more touch points. For this reason, it’s best to meet with an online marketing consultant to help you narrow your opportunities to most cost effective for your business.

The best way to succeed – at anything – is to exercise continuous improvement. And the best way to do that is to measure what you do. Figure out what works and what doesn’t and change what doesn’t. That’s what Website Optimizer can do for you.

Google’s Website Optimizer is a method of testing and tracking your online marketing experiments so you can see what is working and what is not. You can use it to test your landing pages using an A/B testing model or conduct a multivariate testing experiment. Which model you use depends a lot on your marketing campaign.

The Website Optimizer is particularly effective with pay-per-click advertising campaigns. It lets you know how your campaigns are working.

If you have a desire to increase your website traffic or sales conversions, decrease bounce rates and CPA (cost per acquisition) rates, determine the best website design, or see which landing page is most effective, then Website Optimizer is a handy tool.

It’s imperative to test what you’re doing to see if it is working, whether you are engaged in a social media campaign, search engine optimization, or pay per click. Once you figure out what works and what doesn’t, it’s a matter of tweaking until you get it all just right. Think of it as making small adjustments until you get the right mixture of the right elements in your online marketing plan.

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.