by on September 30, 2011 Leave a Comment

Search Engine Marketing Increasing Traffic For Your Company

by Matt Genna

Imagine getting into your car, backing out of your drive way, but not being able to drive to your destination because the road is blocked off. What do you do? You now have little to no options but tons of frustration; this is what it would be like if there were no search engines available.

In this case, the car symbolizes a person’s idea or need, while the road symbolizes a search engine. Search engines help people navigate the World Wide Web efficiently, bringing the most relevant results to the user based on what they were looking for. Luckily, we are privileged enough to use such a tool in our daily lives as long as you have access to an internet connection.

Many times a company or business will find themselves wondering why their website isn’t at the top of the list when searching vaguely for the type of service or product they’re providing, and nine times out of ten it is because they haven’t properly done any research on Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

Search Engine Marketing is a process of internet marketing that uses paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion to help increase a websites visibility in a search engine result page.

It has been said that 93% of the users who use search engines will not look past the second page of the search results that they will acquire. This is why many companies and businesses care about where their website will land after searching for a specific market that they dabble in within a search engine. But it isn’t always the top results being the first to be clicked on, search engines also could help you generate traffic to your website through the advertisements being shown on the search engine results page or through sponsored link pages based on keywords in the users search, this is known as Contextual Advertising. Contextual Advertising is the process in which marketers will place ads on various websites that are similar to their products or services, mainly to catch the user’s eye that is browsing the other website, but is interested in the same topic. For example, if a user is viewing a website pertaining to sports memorabilia, and an ad pops up relating to a sale on baseball cards, this is Contextual Advertising. Companies use this method all the time, and search engines realize how valuable of an asset this is and will charge the company for the amount of times that a user will click on any of these advertisements; this is what is known as Paid Inclusion or Pay Per Click. This is a better way of marketing in my opinion because you will only be paying for something that will show results, while increasing your ranking on search engines due to the traffic that is being generated through all these types of outlets.

Filed Under: BMI Elite Blog, Digital Advertising, Digital Branding, Digital Marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing Campaign, Marketing Consulting, Marketing Strategy, Online Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
by on September 8, 2011 Leave a Comment

Search Engine Marketing and How Today’s Businesses Need It to Survive

by Matt Genna

In today’s fast paced industry, companies and businesses are often looking for the best possible way to attract consumers with a plethora of marketing tactics, whether it’s through commercials, newspaper ads, door-to-door flyers, special sales, etc. Regardless of whichever route they choose to go, it would be absurd not to consider the internet as it is the best way to advertise your services or products to the most targeted consumers at once.

Think about the amount of people that use their computers to login to the internet daily. Now think about how many of those people use search engines like “Google” or “Yahoo” to find specific products or services. This is why many companies and businesses are taking full advantage of this and turning to a type of marketing that in which is called Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

Search Engine Marketing is a type of internet marketing that seeks to advertise websites by increasing their visibility in a search engine result page (SERP for short) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.

Having trouble understanding? Here is an example of one of the processes in which you could use when using SEM for your hamburger business.

Assuming you already have a website for your hamburger business, you would then create an account with Google Adwords (one of the largest vendors for SEM) and create an ad that would say something along the lines of “Amazing hamburgers, best prices for everyone and anyone.” Then you’re going to want to have keywords that mesh well with each other because in Adwords you have the ability to designate keywords and phrases that you would think someone would search for on Google to find what you are promoting. That way, your ad will show up in the results page as well as sites that are somehow related to your keywords. For example, if a website mentions mustard or hamburger buns, your ad could pop up on that site.

Although it does cost money to see the best results, what doesn’t nowadays? At least this way you know that your ad will be seen by relevant consumers who are interested in your product or service, opposed to paying out money for, let’s say, ad space in a newspaper where you have a lesser chance of seeing profit from your spend.

You see, if a company doesn’t use the internet for a place to advertise their products or services, they’re easily missing out on business from consumers who are using the internet to search for what their company may offer. Seeing how many use search engines, it would only be doing you harm in not acting on this as a business owner.

Filed Under: BMI Elite Blog, Online Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
by on August 17, 2011 Leave a Comment

Performance Marketing: The Smart Way to Advertise

by Matt Genna

All right, so you just started your own business and are now ready to establish your services or products to the masses but don’t know the best outlet to do so, or maybe you already have an established company but are looking to expand your clientele. Either way, it’s certain that you will be in need of some type of advertisement to do either of these things. This is when it would be in your best interest to consider performance marketing as your form of advertisement.

Performance marketing is a form of marketing in which affiliates or publishers are paid when a specific service is completed, such as a sale or lead. In short, paying for performance = performance marketing. If the consumer doesn’t follow through with a purchase or lead form, the affiliates or publishers won’t get paid. For example, you might have come across a type of online survey in the past. Now, once you have filled out the survey completely and submitted it, you have become a lead to whoever commissioned the survey. By doing this, you have now expressed interest for this type of service or product, giving the company that provides this specific service or product a more granular understanding of the demand from the consumer. Also, this can help target a specific area in which the demand for your company’s service or product may be greater than another, meaning you will now have a better understanding of your market.

Think about how much more beneficial this is compared to advertising through other outlets such as TV commercials, newspaper ads, etc. When you have a budget for advertising, it’s much smarter to go with a type of advertising that you know has guaranteed results in your vertical. When advertising through TV commercials, you’re kind of hoping that someone who is in need of your service/product will see it, so in retrospect you’re actually paying money for something that may or may not work.

There are also sub-genres of performance marketing; some of these types of sub-genres include affiliate marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM) and social media marketing. These are other tactics that publishers or affiliates will use to generate traffic for your company. Affiliate marketing is a process in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. An example of this would be reward sites, where consumers are rewarded with gifts or cash for completing an offer or referral to friends for the site they’re advertising. Email marketing is the process in which marketers will use advertisements through email. Search engine marketing is the process of internet marketing that promotes a company’s website by helping it generate a higher spot in search engines. Social media marketing is a type of marketing that reaches out to consumers over social media websites, like Facebook or Twitter.

Filed Under: BMI Elite Blog, Digital Advertising, Digital Branding, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing, Performance Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , ,