Tag Archive for small business internet marketing

28 Apr 2011
business tips • internet marketing • seo • small business

Real Time – Feed The Fetish


If you have heard me speak or have been reading my writings for the last several years you know I’ve used the phrase “feed the fetish” before. What I mean by that is to feed the hunger that your target audience is currently hungry for.

Get it?

Here’s an example of why this concept is important in today’s business marketing.

Over a year ago I signed on a new client who sold telephone systems to businesses in the Atlanta, Georgia area. He was looking to expand to other states and he wanted the website to do the marketing for him.

When I conducted the keyword research I told him that the popularity of “telephone systems” and other related terms was not very high. What businesses were looking for instead were cellular based phone systems. He told me that he knew his industry and he was on target – he knew what his audience wanted. Of course, I have to trust him. I mean, I can SEE what people are searching for but I don’t have the general feel of each industry. So, we went ahead with the website.

Well, after it was launched and all the optimization was done we struggled to get visitors. The traffic was low and I kept repeating the keyword research and worked hard to find keyword phrases that would bring in more business. But he didn’t provide the services and products his target audience was looking for. So, there was nothing to add to the site.

I suspected, after 6 months, that the site would go under if not the entire business. Well, last week I received a notice from his attorney advising me of the bankruptcy of my client’s company. I’m not surprised. And frankly, he shouldn’t be either.

In today’s market – there is no excuse for not knowing what your audience wants. And there’s very little excuse for not giving it to them. The Internet is not going away, if anything, it’s growing. And mobile is where it’s all going. Mobile internet users will overtake desktop pc internet users within 5 years. Anyone in this industry has known this for several years – it’s no shock. So, get ready.

How To Find Real Time Information

There are multiple free programs that you can use to help you get a feel for what is “real time”.

1) Google Adwords

Type in your general phrase and you’ll get back a list of keyword phrases that are currently being bid on and used in Google’s PPC marketing campaigns.  You’ll also get the popularity of these phrases (how many searches are recorded for each phrase).

2) Google Insights

What I like about Insights is that it breaks it down by geography.  But it really only works with very general terms.  So, try using just one word phrases to get a feel for what your audience is looking for.

3) Twitter Search

The tagline for Twitter Search is “see what’s happening – right now”.  And they’re right.  But it really works best for pop culture or items in the news.  Basically it’s what people are talking about “right now”.    My suggestion for this tool is to use phrases that are related to your service or the problems that you can fix.  In other words if you’re a dentist, don’t search for the word “dentist” in Twitter search, instead type in “root canal” (yes, in quotes) or “tooth pain”.

Well, I hope this information helps you to identify what your audience wants.  Once you find out – don’t forget to give it to them via your blog, your website, your social media programs.


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01 Aug 2010
internet marketing • ppc marketing • small business

PPC for Small Businesses


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.


eckweb | No comments | Tags: , , ,
01 Aug 2009
internet marketing • seo • small business

Comparing SEO Rates With ROI


Comparing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) rates with ROI (Return On Investment) is something that many business website owners fail to do.  With the average price of $20,000-$30,000 yearly investment, search engine optimization rates can be somewhat of a sticker shock, especially for small and home based businesses.

There are seo companies, like Eckweb Designs, Inc. that cater to small and home based businesses, yearly rates average $7000.00 – much more doable for smaller companies.

At any rate, how do you decide which rates you can afford?  Well, like any advertising campaign, you need a budget.  You need to know what monies can be spent and you need to have an “idea” of what can be gained.  So, let’s see if we can break it down.

The first thing you have to know is the profit margin that you make from each client or sale.  I know, you may think this is so basic, but I speak with MANY small business owners and I’m telling you, the majority have no idea what their profit margin is!

There are many formulas that you can find on the Internet that can help you do this.  But I want to focus on the costs you would spend with SEO vs. the Return on Investment you would get.

So, let’s say you have figured out that each client brings in a profit of $50.00 (as an example).  So, the next question is how many clients would you need to offset the SEO rates from your SEO firm?  Or the cost of an inhouse SEO webmaster?

Of course, this depends on what you spend on SEO and as you probably already know, the rates for SEO services are all over the place.  But, the average is $20,000 per year, so we’ll go with that.  This then means that your SEO campaign would have to bring in a minimum of 400 clients in order to offset the $20,000 fee.  That would be an average of 33 new clients each month.  Is that feasible?  Can your business handle 400 more clients?  Are there 400 more clients in your area?  Looking for your service and / or product? Only you can answer these questions.

At Eckweb, our average is $7000.00 / year – so an SEO campaign with us would have to bring in a minimum of 140 new clients to offset the seo cost.  That would be an average of 11 new clients each month.  Again, is that feasible?  Can your business handle 140 more clients?  Are there 140 more clients in your area?  Looking for your service and/or product?

So, when you’re looking at SEO rates consider your ROI – what do you need to do to make up the costs for this marketing campaign?  How feasible is it that you will recover these costs?  The answers to these questions can help you greatly to avoid costly mistakes.

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Comparing SEO Rates with ROI by Esther C Kane is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at estherckane.com.
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eckweb | No comments | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
21 Dec 2008
internet marketing • seo • small business

If It’s Good Enough For The Big Boys…


One question I get quite often is “Should I buy several domain names?”

My answer is usually “Yes” and I’ll give you two reasons why.

1) You should buy your domain name with different extensions. In other words, if your domain is www.roberts.com then you’ll want to also buy www.roberts.net, www.roberts.biz, etc. The point is to keep someone else from buying them.

2) It’s better to have multiple, niche websites than to put all your information into one website. Why? Because the niche websites can provide more information and be structured more “themed” than one website with everything.

3) The large companies all do this. They have separate websites each one marketing a specific service or two that they provide. Think about it. If you publish one book and put 100 copies of 1 book in a bookstore, you’ll get some sales (hopefully). But if you publish 5 books and put 100 copies of each of those 5 books in a bookstore, you’ll get more sales.

So, for the extremely low price that domain names go for, my recommendation is always


eckweb | No comments | Tags: , , ,
29 Oct 2008
internet marketing • seo • small business

Does Your Website Have Goals?


Does your website have goals? I mean REALLY!

I bet you think it does. Some of you may be right. But, just to make sure, go and check.

The website goals I’m talking about are measurable goals. This means that when you look through your website stats you can measure if the goals are being met or not. After all, what’s the point of reviewing statistics on the website if you don’t even know if the campaign is working? But believe me, so many website owners just get a report of how many people have visited the site. There’s so much more to website stats than that!

But, to get back to the subject of website goals, here’s a cool little technique you can use to help build your Internet marketing campaing. But it only works if you have measurable goals set up on your website. Oh, by the way, I’m using Google Analytics as the statistical tool. If you’re not tracking your website logs, try Google Analytics, it’s free and it’s great!

1) Go to your stats program and look for the list of resources. Within that list you want the list of keyword phrases. This list basically tells you what keyword phrases were used by the visitors who found your website.

2) Website statistics are based on the pages that are being monitored on your website. So, if the website has a sale page, the visitor makes the purchase on the sales page and then once the purchase is made, the visitor is taken to a thankyou for your purchase page. That “thank you for your purchase” page is counted as a Sales goal. Let’s say the website also has a contact page and once a visitor fills out the form on the contact page they are then taken to a thankyou for contacting us page. That “thank you for contacting us” is counted as a Leads goal. Both the website owner and the SEO firm can then see how well (or not) the website is doing as far as conversions, sales and leads.

3) Google Analytics has this great feature for their keywords – they provide a Goal Conversion feature. So, you can take a look at the keywords that visitors are using to find your website and you can then see from that list, which keyword phrases resulted in a sale or a lead. That’s pretty cool!

You want to compare the number of visitors the keyword phrase brought AND the percentage that converted into a sale or a lead. Here’s an example…

We have a client selling Name Tags.

His list of top 3 keyword phrases that converted into sales are…
name tags – 640 visitors used this phrase – 1.56% converted (9 visitors)
metal name tags – 133 visitors used this phrase – .75% converted (1 visitor)
magnetic name tags – 122 visitors used this phrase – 3.28% converted (4 visitors)

So for this website, “name tags” is a phrase that is converting into sales. The conclusion then is to add more pages with related phrases to “name tags”. You may be saying to yourself, “Well, of course name tags is the phrase!”. That’s what we sell! But what if you thought that the phrase “name badges” was more important? What if you wanted to emphasize “magnetic name tags” because you had a surplus of these items? This toll lets you know that “name tags” is much more profitable than “name badges” and that if you wanted to sell those surplus magnetic name tags, what you could expect as far as sales.

You could also work on increasing the conversion! If your goal was to reach a 10% conversion rate for your SEO Marketing, this tool also gives you the overall conversion rate for your keywords and listed goals. But, this only works if you have goals measured on your website. So, check with your web designer, your SEO firm or check into it yourself and make sure that you’re listing your goals, measuring your goals and tweaking your website in order to improve them and improve your bottom line!

Good luck!


eckweb | One comment | Tags: , , ,
21 Dec 2007
article writing • small business

If It’s Good Enough For The Big Boys…


One question I get quite often is “Should I buy several domain names?”

My answer is usually “Yes” and I’ll give you two reasons why.

1) You should buy your domain name with different extensions. In other words, if your domain is www.roberts.com then you’ll want to also buy www.roberts.net, www.roberts.biz, etc. The point is to keep someone else from buying them.

2) It’s better to have multiple, niche websites than to put all your information into one website. Why? Because the niche websites can provide more information and be structured more “themed” than one website with everything.

3) The large companies all do this. They have separate websites each one marketing a specific service or two that they provide. Think about it. If you publish one book and put 100 copies of 1 book in a bookstore, you’ll get some sales (hopefully). But if you publish 5 books and put 100 copies of each of those 5 books in a bookstore, you’ll get more sales.

So, for the extremely low price that domain names go for, my recommendation is always


eckweb | No comments | Tags: , , ,