Esther C Kane

PPC (Pay Per Click) for small businesses can be an excellent, effective tool if it’s used right.  The mistake, in my humble opinion, that many small businesses make when it comes to PPC marketing is that they don’t do their homework and they don’t properly maintain the campaign.  For these reasons, they can often spend much more money than they need to.  So, here are some tips on how small businesses can use PPC marketing.

1) Have a realistic budget.  I know some small businesses will want to stick with 10.00/day budget.  Okay, let’s say you do this.  If your average cost per click is $1.00 that means you’ll get 10 clicks. Now, think about your average conversion.  Are you able to convert 1 out of every 10 visitors?  If so, then you’ll average 1 new lead per click.  What is the average number of leads that you can convert to a customer?  This “math formula” will help you identify what your true daily expenditure should be.

2) Don’t just “set and forget”.  What I mean is, don’t just follow the guidelines or recommendations that Google gives you when you’re setting up your account.  Those recommendations are for the benefit of Google.  Investigate, test, re-investigate and re-test each setting.  Just because Google recommends $50.00 per day budget doesn’t mean that’s the best budget for you.  Just because Google recommends using the Content Network doesn’t mean that’s right for you.

3) Many small businesses forget to target a specific geography.  Don’t.  There are not many small businesses that can do transactions with every single country on the planet.   Let Google know where you want your ads to show.

4) Another thing small business owners tend to do is create one campaign and/or one ad.  This will never work.  You need multiple ads (at the very least) and you should have multiple campaigns.  I know, it means more money but make no mistake, PPC is not for small businesses with empty pocket books.  It’s like a casino.  If you don’t have money to spend you shouldn’t be going into a casino hoping that you’ll come out with more money.  You should only be spending money that you can live without.

5) Keywords!  It’s all about the keywords.  If you can pick the right keyword phrase you’ll do so much better than if you don’t.  How to do that?  How often to change them?  How to emphasize them?  There’s much more to PPC than writing an ad and just throwing it up and waiting for the calls to come in.  You’re essentially entering a race with your competitors.  If they’re driving cars with more powerful engines and you’re riding a bicycle well, it’s no wonder they’ll beat you every single time.

For more tips here’s a great article with some excellent ideas on ppc marketing for small businesses.

PPC marketing works but only if you know how to work it.

If anyone asked me “What’s the most common question you get from prospects?”  My answer would be, “What’s the secret to getting my site on top?”

I usually laugh a little and say something like, “…there is no secret…just hard work…”  But I wonder if they believe me.  Maybe sometimes they do.  Certainly the ones who try the SEO firms that “promise them results” and “guarantee placement” do.  Those are the prospects that come back and turn into great clients.  Why?  Because they know the truth now.  Internet marketing is just plain hard work.

Steps To Marketing Your Business On The Internet

The simple truth of Internet Marketing is…

1) Find out what your audience is looking for
2) Put that on your website
3) Go social

Basically, this means find the keyword phrases your audience are typing in, have your website optimized for those keyword phrases and use the power of social media to let everyone know who you are, what you do and why they should use you.

I guess if I had to say that there was a secret to Internet marketing, this would be it!

I just read a great article from the SEOBook – it goes into a bit more detail on how to market your business on the Internet….check it out!

If you’ve read anything I’ve written in the last 10 years or have heard me speak at any one of the gatherings I’ve been invited to, you may have heard me use the phrase “Feed the Fetish”.

What I mean, when I say that, is Feed The Customer!  On the Internet that means, feed their current desire.  Which means, find out what they’re looking for and then feed it to them!

If your small business sells red shoes and your keyword research shows that yellow shoes are in higher demand, wouldn’t you look for a yellow shoe distributor?  Wouldn’t you add yellow shoes to your inventory of products?  Your audience is looking for them.  That’s the “fetish” this month, this quarter, this year.  Whatever.  If your audience wants it, if they’re hungry for it, feed it to them!

Here’s a great article at Suite101.com about putting the customer first in your Internet marketing campaign.

In today’s tough economy, more and more individuals are looking at earning income on their own.  In other words, starting a small business.  It doesn’t matter if the business is from the kitchen table or from an office, the number of small businesses are exploding.  It’s no surprise.  With fewer available jobs, it’s just a matter of survival!

But if you’re one of the millions who have gone down this path, you may be wondering how to begin or improve your marketing campaigns?  Now that you’ve got something to sell, how do you let others know that you’re here?

One of the (if not THE) cheapest marketing venues today is the Internet.  Now, when I say “cheap” I mean monetary.  Don’t think it’s completely free and easy.  The cost comes in time.  So, yes, it can be practically free to do most if not all of the Internet marketing yourself, but it takes time and quite a bit of it.  Just wanted you to know!

Anyway, back to Internet marketing for small businesses…

There are multiple ways that a small company can market their services and/or products on the Internet.  The key to remember in anything you do on the Internet is to KNOW WHAT YOUR AUDIENCE WANTS.  In other words, find out what they’re searching for and then give it to them.  Here’s an example:

Acom Communications provides business phone installation services as well as selling new and refurbished phone systems for offices of all sizes.  They do this in the Atlanta Georgia area.  So, one keyword phrase they would like to use is “business phone installers atlanta georgia“.  Okay, that’s good.  But is their audience looking for that?  Luckily, there are ways to find out what people are searching for on the Internet, and that’s what we did.  Here’s how.

1) We used tools like SEMRush.com and Wordtracker to find the keyword phrases people are using AND the keyword phrases the competition is using.
2) We used Google Adwords Keyword tool to find the keyword phrases companies are bidding on.

Come to find out lots of people were searching for “avaya phone installers” – so we created a page to market just that phrase.  Now, without this keyword research this company would have only marketed the main phrase for “phone installers” but the research gave us data that allowed us to narrow down the keywords to specific brands which the audience are already looking for.

Some Small Business Internet Marketing Tips You Can Start On Today

Okay, so now you know that the very first step you must take is getting the list of keyword phrases you’ll be marketing.  The second step is to WRITE.  Yes, I know, it’s horrible.  I mention this to some prospects and then I never hear from them again!  If you absolutely can’t write, find someone who can.  There’s no getting away from the fact that in order to market on the Internet, you actually have to write.  Personally, I just tell my prospects and clients that “…if you can talk, you can write…”

So, what to write about?

Well, you have your list of keyword phrases.  Take one phrase and write 3-4 paragraphs about it.  You can follow the old rules we all learned back in junior high.

Who, What, When, Where, How and Why

If you’re writing about Avaya Phone Installers then answer the questions…

1) Who are you (your company I mean)
2) What do you do exactly and more important, what can you do for ME?
3) When can you do your work?  Monday – Friday?  24/7?  When?
4) Where do you do your work?  I know you’re in Atlanta but will you come as far as Cummings?
5) How do you do your work?  Can I trust you?  Are you licensed?
6) Why should I buy from you?

Aim your content towards the customer.  What I mean is don’t write JUST about your company and who you are, etc.  Your content should be about how your service can benefit the reader.  It’s all about them.

I will recommend that you use the keyword phrase you’re marketing in the title of the article, in the body of the article 2-3 times.  This is the very least you can do to optimize the content for that keyword phrase.

My 3rd Internet Marketing Tip for Small Businesses

So, now you know that you need to have the list of keyword phrases and that you need to write 3-4 paragraphs about each keyword phrase.  What’s next?

Well, this content now needs to be put out on the Internet.  There are multiple ways to do this.  Here are some…

1) On a website page.
2) On a blog post.
3) On Squidoo.
4) On Facebook.
5) On articles which are then submitted to article directories like Geckoe.com

Doing any one of these can help you to market your business, doing all can help even more.  There’s alot you can do for your own Internet marketing campaign, but like I said at the beginning, the cost may not be in dollars but it will be in time.  So, just be prepared for that!  Good luck!

There’s no doubt that the BEST use of any website statistics programs is tracking the goals that you set up for the website.

Wait, what?  Did I hear you say “What goals?” – Are you one of the millions of website owners who don’t have specific goals for each website page?  Then,  what are you marketing?  How do you know you’ve succeeded?  Just because the phone is ringing more doesn’t mean there are more sales.  Just because there’s more email in your inbox doesn’t mean it isn’t more spam!

Here’s the basic concept:

1) Go to each page of your website and make a conscious decision of what GOAL do you want to achieve with that page.  Do you want the visitor to move to another page?  Do you want the visitor to call you?  Do you want the visitor to email you?  Do you want the visitor to click on a specific button?

2) Write these down and then put them on your website stats program to track.  In Google Analytics you can do this through the Goals section or thru the Event Tracking section.  Either way, track them!

3) Monitor the stats monthly to see what goals are being met and which ones are not.  Of the ones that are not (and there will be those, believe me) – do some investigating to find out why they aren’t being acted on.  Maybe the graphic is too far down on the page.  Maybe the phone number isn’t easy to find on the website page.  Whatever it is, investigate.

Oh, and in case you don’t think you can track phone calls easily on a website, guess again.  Check into Google Voice.  You can use a FREE phone number provided by Google Voice on your website.  Forward it to your office phone and that’s that.  You’ve got a tracking of incoming phone calls from your website.

Leave it to Google Analytics to come up with more ways to track those precious visitors throughout your website!  After all, if you know what your visitors are doing (or not doing) you’ll be able to further tweak your website to meet their needs.  And isn’t that what business is all about?  Meeting the needs of the customers!

Basically, “Event Tracking” is a feature that you can use on Google Analytics that “…allows you to track visitor actions that don’t correspond directly to pageviews.” You know, things like downloading PDF’s, interacting with videos, etc.

So, what can you use Event Tracking for?  Let’s see if I can come up with some ideas for you.

1) Clicks on call to action buttons
2) Clicks on specific links
3) Clicks on specific graphics
4) Downloading PDF’s or other forms
5) Clicks on external links (links to other websites from your own website)
6) Clicks on shopping cart links to identify where most visitors abandon the process.  Can also be used on any multi-step process, not just shopping carts.

Well, these are just a few ways and ideas that Event Tracking can be used on your website.  Go ahead, take a look at your site and see where you can implement this great feature!

Although we’ve been using Google Analytics for the past many years it’s always good to look and see what other free website stats programs are available and how they stack up.

Google Analytics
Comparing  Google Analytics and Awstats
Comparing Google Analytics and StatCounter
Comparing Google Analytics and GetClicky
Comparing Google Analytics and Woopra

Awstats
Comparing Awstats to GetClicky
Comparing Awstats to Woopra
Comparing Awstats to StatCounter

StatCounter
Comparing StatCounter and GetClicky
Comparing StatCounter and Woopra

GetClicky
Comparing GetClicky and Woopra

Woopra

If you’re not familiar with the benchmarking stats that Google Analytics gives you or how to use it, here’s some information that you may find useful.

According to Google, benchmarking is described as…

“…an optional Google Analytics service that shows how your website’s statistics compare against other industry verticals. In the beta version of this service, you are able to compare your site’s Visits, Pageviews, Pages per Visit, Bounce Rate, Average Time on Site, and New Visits data against benchmark data from categories of other participating websites. You can use this data to gain broader context for your site so you can identify additional opportunities to improve your site’s metrics.”

Basically, the benchmarking service gives you some insight into how your website compares to other websites within your industry.  Well, at least within the category of your industry.

Let’s take one website as an example, this website is one for a divorce attorney in Miami.

When I open the Benchmarking tab in his Google Analytics account I can compare his website to all websites of similar size OR to websites who are listed in Family Law and are similar to his size.  I chose to be specific and get some benchmark data comparing my clients’ website to others in Family Law.

The results are as follows….

1) My client receives 11.44% more visitors than other family law websites of the same size.
Analysis: So, this stat is good.  It means that the marketing I’m doing for him is working.  He’s getting more visitors than other websites his size.

2) My clients’ website has 6.10% higher bounce rate than other websites in this comparison.
Analysis: This stat requires that I look a bit deeper into what pages are bouncing.  See if I can find why there’s a bounce, is there supposed to be a bounce?  And what can I do to fix it?

3) My clients’ website has 2.70% fewer page views.  That means less people are moving around the site to other pages.
Analysis:  Hmm – this tells me that I probably need to go in and create a “workflow” of how I want visitors to go through the site.  Once I’ve decided the workflow, I then need to create some call to action buttons to give the visitors guides throughout the site.

4) My clients’ website has 14.61% higher average time on the site.
Analysis:  This is good.  This tells me that the information on the site is good.  It’s what the visitors want.

5) My clients’ website has 12.69% fewer page/visits.
Analysis: The average visitor went to 2.23 pages on the website.  This is lower than normal and it tells me again, that I probably need to add some more call to action buttons throughout the site.  Or perhaps we need some more information about certain topics on the site.  I would have to analyze which pages are not being viewed and see if it’s a navigation problem (maybe the visitors aren’t seeing these pages?)

6) My clients’ website has 1.33% fewer new visitors to the site.
Analysis: This is not good.  My client is getting fewer new visitors to his site than his competition.  The Internet marketing is not attracting new visitors and I now need to find out if the problem is keywords or the site itself.

So you see, the information provided from the benchmarking feature on Google Analytics is a great way to “see” what’s going on with the website.  The next step then is to have the experience and expertise to dissect the information and create a plan to make any corrections needed.  So, I guess it’s true, Internet marketing is a bit of science and bit of an art form!

Well, as you may have guessed, this month, the theme of the blog is Website Statistics.  Mainly, Google Analytics since we use that and are most familiar with it.

Today’s topic is on Bounce Rates.  If you’re not checking your website bounce rates, you should.  So, let’s see if I can explain it to you and help you figure out what to do if your bounce rate is not so great.

According to Google, bounce rate means:  “the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.”

Basically, if someone comes in to your website on your Services page and then leaves your website without going to any other pages, that’s a bounce.

Is a high bounce rate a bad thing?  Well, it depends on what you wanted the visitor to do from that page.

If the visitor comes in to your website on the “Contact Us” you may want your visitor to call you.  So, a high bounce rate from this particular page would not be a bad thing.

But, if you do have a high bounce rate on a page that you shouldn’t, here are some reasons as to why that might be.

1) The information on the page isn’t what the visitor was looking for.
Solution: First, make sure that the keyword phrase you’re marketing is what’s on this page.  Second, make sure that the description  tag matches the information on this page.

2) The site design is poor, leaving the visitor confused as to where to go to next.
Solution: There’s a true art to website design.  It’s not just about the colors and the graphics.  It’s also about navigation.  Get as many different opinions from as many different people as possible about your site’s navigation.  Is it easy to find things?  Are the buttons clear?  Etc.

3) There’s no call to action on the page.
Solution:  In the process of designing (or redesigning your website) make sure that you set up an intended action for each page.  You want to know what action you want the visitor to take and you want to tell the visitor as clear as possible that you want them to take that action.

There are some FABULOUS statistics that you can get about the visitors to your website via the Google Analytics tool.  Let me give you a brief explanation of each section.

Benchmarking
Google explains “benchmarking” like this…”Based on the number of visits each site receives, sites of similar sizes are grouped together under three classifications: small, medium, and large. This way, you can compare yourself to other similarly sized sites.”

Basically, it gives you an idea of how your website is doing compared to others of the same size.  Of course, there are other factors to consider, the time of year, your industry, etc.  But at least you have a “benchmark” idea of where your site may be worse off than others in your size range.

Map Overlay
One of my very favorite stats on Google Analytics is the “map overlay”.  It gives me a detailed list of where my visitors are coming from.  It’s broken down to region, country, state and city.  And not only does it give you the places where the visitors are coming from, but it also gives you the keyword phrases the users typed in to find you!  There’s alot more information it also gives so check it out!

New vs. Returning
You may be working hard to get new people to your website.  You know, the first time visitors.  Google Analytics breaks it down for you by letting you know which visitors have been there before and which ones are new!  It’s a thing of beauty.

Languages
Are you getting visitors coming to your site who are French?  Do you want to attract a French demographics?  No?  Well, you’ll have to analyze why your website is doing that but at least this tool gives you the data on what language demographic you’re getting.

Visitor Trending
Here you can see “trends” on your site.  What days are the most popular?  Is your site bounce rate getting better or worse?  Are more people visiting more pages?

Visitor Loyalty
How many visitors come to the site once, twice or more?  How long do they stay?  How deep into the site do they go?  Lots of information here on this stat.

Browser Capabilities
What browsers are your visitors using?  Do the majority of them use Firefox?  What does your website look like in Firefox?  Maybe the majority of your visitors have a 1280×800 screen resolution.  What does your website look like in that resolution?  Fixing any of these problems may increase your conversion rate.

Network Properties
What ISP’s are your visitors using?  Are they on high speed?  Cable?  Satellite?  This many not matter but if your website has alot of Flash and graphics and loads up slowly, you may want to cut down the size of your pages so that slower service providers can accomodate.

Mobile
This is one of my favorite stats.  Because of the explosion of mobile use in the USA in the last year, it’s only natural to begin tracking how many visitors come to your website via a mobile device.   If your target audience is “on the go” then you may want to provide mobile coupons, interactive maps, easier forms, etc.

The concept here is to use the great information that Google Analytics gives you to improve your website.  Not only for the sake of the site, but for the sake of your business!