In case you didn’t know, we’re in tough economic times.  These economic conditions have drastically cut budgets across the nation and world, leaving meager allowances for marketing and advertising in its wake.

Nonetheless, expectations for 2010 remain optimistic.  In a new study released yesterday, StrongMail reveals nine out of ten business executives plan to maintain or increase their marketing budgets.  Execs aren’t thinking conventionally for the new decade either, instead the survey’s respondents indicated they were open to marketing strategies that utilize the Internet and maximize their dollar.  Next year, 69 and 59 percent of business executives anticipate increasing their email and social media marketing, respectively. Another 42 percent claimed they expect to spend more on search engine initiatives, such as SEO and PPC.  The survey’s results indicate a migration to internet marketing tactics, as advertising and direct mailing initiatives are expected by less than 30 percent of execs.

Furthermore, the study showed a desire among business executives to combine the tested and proven tactics of emailing potential customers with social media.  Execs did not, however, demonstrate uniform confidence about how they would go about implementing such strategies in the upcoming year.  Instead, one out of five executives claimed they had no idea where to begin.  With more businesses seeking to establish an online presence in hopes of finding cheaper alternatives to conventional advertising, it is certain that social media marketing and search engine initiatives will play integral roles in the year 2010.

PPC can be a complicated advertising method.  With constant changes in the algorithms and Quality Score indexes, we need to stay on top of strategies that fall under the “best practices” category.  We can talk all day about landing pages and call to action but the first step in any Internet marketing strategy is to get the clicks.  Without the clicks everything else is irrelevant right?  So how do we ensure that the ad titles and descriptions are compelling enough to get the clicks?

Here are a few tips for improving Click Through Rate for yout PPC ads:

1.  Direct Keyword Association:  Use the exact keywords in your ad title and landing page copy.

Example Keyword Search:  Summer shoe sale

2.  Trademark or Regsitration Symbol:  This works well when running PPC for distinct products and brands

Example Keyword Search:  Back to school clothing sale  (notice the Dickies.com ad)

3.  Use the Price in the Ad Title:  This works well when running special offers or sales

Example Keyword Search:  Cheap San Diego hotel rooms (notice the Heritage Hotels ad)

4.  Season Association in Ad Title:  This goes back to keyword association and creating relevance between the search and the ad title

Example Keyword Search:  Summer shoe sale (notice the use of “Summer” in the simple ad title)

5.  Use a Brand or Product Name as a Subdomain URL

Example Keyword Search:  Xbox 360 sale

Notice that the ad for the Xbox uses a few of these strategies combined:

• Keyword association (direct keyword match – or at least close)
• Price offer in the ad title
• Brand name as Subdomain URL

All the studies out there point to the fact that an integrated online marketing strategy is more powerful than just using one Internet marketing channel alone.  Most strategies compliment one another very well.  Today, I want to talk a bit about the use of search engine optimization and pay per click advertising together as a combined strategy. 

About SEO:  Organic search engine optimization is the process performed on (and off) a website to improve the quality and volumes of traffic from the natural search results.  A good SEO campaign starts with a targeted keyword strategy.  Then best practices must be applied to site architecture, content, and link building.  SEO is one of the most important investments in the long term online visibility for any brand.  However, unless you already have good momentum with natural placements, it can take time to see results.

About PPC:  Pay Per Click advertising is a strategy that involves buying keywords through programs like Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, etc.  Again, it starts with defining the keyword strategy and setting budgets.  You can of course dig deeper by geo-targeting terms as well as using daily and hourly targeting so that over time you can maxmize your budget and have your ads showing only during times where you are experiencing the best conversions.  Google now uses a Quality Score index to rank campaigns.  This is important because your budget matters less and the quality of your campaign and landing pages matters more. 

Here are some interesting stats on spending:

• PPC search advertising continues to be the largest category, growing from $9.1 billion in 2007 to $20.9 billion in 2013. (Source: C|Net News, June 30, 2008)
• Companies in the US spent $10 billion last year on paid search ads, and even more this year. How about SEO?
• SEO: $1.3 billion (11%) (Source: SEMPO data via Massimo Burgio, SMX Madrid 2008)
• According to SEMPO’s data, it’s 11% for SEO and 87% for PPC (with another 1.4% for SEM technologies and 1% for paid Inclusion).

It seems that people still do not quite grasp the power of natural search rankings.  Let’s take a look at this heat map study to show where most users look when doing searches online.

Companies that use only paid search marketing do so usually because they either do not have good orgainc rankings or are deploying a very targeting ad campaign.  Companies that use only SEO usually do so because they have great natural traffic and don’t have much need for more targeted advertising (or think they don’t). 

As we all know, starting from scrath, SEO takes months to generate good lasting results.  The time it takes to show results is largely based on a few factors:  the competitiveness of the industry online, the age and history of the domain, the number of inbound links the site may already have, content, and the overall quality of the SEO campaign.  In the meantime, many companies use PPC to drive traffic and generate revenue.  PPC advertising managed correctly can show some big wins.  But you don’t want to have to rely on PPC alone forever.  This is not a scalable strategy nor will it always yield the best conversions as compared to great natural traffic. 

When using PPC as a means to drive traffic while working on building natural rankings, the keyword movements and traffic volumes coming through the SEO efforts should be monitored closely.  As specific keywords start to drive more traffic (most likely from moving to the first page results), you can gradually start to decrease the PPC budgets.  You don’t want to be too quick to turn certains terms off though and you will want to montior both efforts closely.

Many case studies are now showing that conversions rates increase when companies deploy BOTH methods, even for overlapping keyword strategies.  Companies using both methods, are seeing the conversions coming through SEO, but at a much higher rate than using either PPC or SEO alone.  So as keywords start generating more natural traffic, you may want to consider decreasing some budgets while still maintaining keyword visibility in both natural and paid results. 

A deeper analysis will come when you start really looking at your CPA (cost per acquisiton) and conversion goals through your paid search efforts.  Since PPC is advertising, you can lose money if it is not managed well.  SEO is really more of a true business development investment.  Once you start SEO you really can’t stop – and when you start showing higher traffic volumes coming through natural search, you won’t want to!  The visitors coming through natural search results usually stay on the site longer, view more pages, and convert better. 

The conclusion:  Every brand will need a different strategy but if you have the means, deploying both SEO and paid search can generate great results.  If you decide to manage both efforts in-house be sure to seek professional advice on how each work separately and as a combined strategy.

So you’ve got your million dollar idea – congratulations. Now what are you going to do to market it online? Well, any good internet marketing company will suggest that you start a Pay-per-click ad right away to get immediate exposure. And they’re right. However, if you’re in this for the long run, you should also be focusing on search engine optimization and building your website accordingly. In order to have a successful PPC campaign, you must take many things into consideration. “Success” is an arbitrary word in this case as it is different for every website. For this, I will define Success as getting the right users to your website and having them click on what you want them to click on. The first thing that you must do is your homework to find your niche for your website and what competition exists. If for example you have a website dedicated to a solar-powered car, you may want to look into what terms are being searched for “solar-powered car”. You may learn that only 20 people per month are searching for this term as this is a not a widely known concept. However, you may find out that the term “Hybrid car” is searched over 20,000 times each month. Although this may not be your exact target demographic – it’s in the same vicinity and you can thus test to see what is going to drive the best and most qualified traffic to your site.

Also, you should also go after low-cost keywords as well. This is highly suggested for any new company starting out that doesn’t have a huge budget. So, for example, you wouldn’t want to go after the term “car” because that is not only too broad of a search term, but also it is a highly expensive on a CPC basis.

You also want to write engaging ads for your viewers to see. The viewer will hence see these ads and want to click on them. Be careful and selective in what you write for your description and make sure you have the search term in the ad. This will give you good placement for your ad in the sponsored results page as you’ll have more clicks on it because users will find this relevant. Any good internet marketing company will be able to generate a solid campaign for you and help you with your Pay-per-click campaign.

Studies show that small to medium size businesses make up the majority of online marketing dollars spent each year.  While other forms of traditional media are shrinking, the online marketing industry has still shown steady growth this year.  It is simply more dynamic, more cost effective, and broadcasts to a wider audience.

For local businesses, using PPC and organic SEO can be extremely effective for attracting new clients and customers.  To do this properly, the campaigns must be fully optimized, continually monitored, and the websites must be engineered/designed to convert traffic into business.  This is the most important part.  If you are paying $10,000 per month in PPC but all the traffic goes to a slowly loading flash page or a home page with no specific call-to-action, you are wasting money…maybe not all your money, but most of it.

People associate a good Google presence with excellence for some reason.  Obtaining first page Google results for your main keywords will not necessarily turn you into a $50 million company, but it is crucial if you want to become one.  If you are a small to medium size business seeking to increase your local presence in your community, your should seek out a professional SEO company.  But be careful.  Even some of the best firms out there make big promises and don’t deliver.  There are no guarantees of course, but you need to be careful about how you choose an Internet marketing company.