Generate More Business

After spending 3 inspirational days representing WebVisible at the DMS 2011 conference in Denver (put on by BIA/Kelsey), one thing seems more true than ever: SMB owners have their hands full. They recognize the importance of internet advertising, but often wear multiple hats, juggling sales, marketing, and branding in one hand, and customer service, retention and innovation in the other hand. Outsourcing is often the only viable solution for many of their day-to-day business processes, including lead generation and marketing on the Internet.

As a company founded and known for excellence in supporting reseller and partners with small business advertising solutions, WebVisible manages many of the same processes upstream. Pay Per Click online advertising, lead generation, SaaS driven marketing solutions and Reputation Monitoring are all part of our value proposition. Our goal is always three-fold: deliver easy to use marketing solutions for WebVisible clients via an automated advertising system, provide scalable solutions for our partners, and innovate, innovate, innovate.

I read an article recently about Steve Job’s formula for success at Apple, who lists the following as one of his top mantras for success: “Make it all one platform”. Apple’s commitment to blurring the distinction between software and hardware with respect to providing a singular user experience has driven every-day consumer experiences with mobile devices into the cloud. iPhone is iTunes is Mobile.me (now iCloud). Their customer loyalty is unparalleled, and it’s largely due to their commitment to platform integration and unified user experience.
 

WebVisible recently unveiled a cutting edge Reputation Monitoring product. It stood alone with a separate log-in for a short while, but is now baked into our Merchant Center Dashboard alongside Geneva, KPEye and all of the other behind-the-scenes technology that our customers, partners and resellers benefit from on a daily basis.  

Steve Jobs’ desire to make Apple ‘just one thing’, with no distinction between hardware, software, products and services is largely paralleled with the Reputation Monitoring iFrame integration for two reasons:

1.) Fusing access to our Merchant Center and Reputation Monitoring dashboard effectively turns two activities into one, making it easier for a business owner to keep track of online advertising and reputation. If you’re wondering how or why this is, think about the area code of your cell phone. Area codes are perceived as a single unit of information, not three separate numbers.  Single sign-on access for a dashboard benefits from the same psychological principal.

2.) The second is a bit more of a game-changer, as it leverages the well-known statute of negative word of mouth, and that it travels 10 times faster than positive word-of-mouth, albeit in reverse.  

Delivering world-class results to our advertisers is easy. Helping them to carve time out of their busy schedules to spend time engaging with our Merchant Center to revel in the success of their SEM campaigns is a bit more challenging. If an advertiser invests in a successful advertising platform that delivers dynamite results, if they don’t engage with the platform, they might not recognize the success of the campaign even when we are exceeding their expectations.

Business owners are busy, and they don’t know what they don’t know.

To this end, the real magic in platform integration is that by giving our advertisers the ability to identify and respond to negative (and positive) reviews in a unified dashboard, their retention rates increase.

Why is this?

How do negative reviews relate to lead generation, advertiser retention and platform engagement?

By putting Reputation Monitoring right alongside the ability to track SEM campaigns simultaneously, something remarkable happens. Marketing and Reputation Monitoring merge into the same platform and become synonymous in terms of the mental energy it takes for advertisers to set aside on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Advertisers’ log in to their Merchant Center dashboard more often, and retention increases alongside client satisfaction. 

According to the principle of the speed of word of mouth, the desire to vet out and respond to or eliminate negative reviews online is also far greater than the desire to read positive reviews. Since advertisers are already online and logged in checking their reviews, they naturally check the results of their advertising campaigns since it’s only a click away. Merging these previously separate platforms together drives advertisers to engage more frequently, for longer, and with greater attentiveness. With platform integration, the distinctions between marketing Reputation Monitoring blur into a singular activity, encouraging more frequent and increased platform engagement with our advertisers.

Lead generation services and reputation monitoring tools are now interrelated, interdependent and act as drivers and motivators for one another. The power of harnessing innovation via platform integration is gestalt-esque, resulting in a downstream increase in both perceived and objective value in the eyes of advertisers, and an upstream lift in retention rates for resellers.

1 + 1 now equals 3.

Apple isn’t Apple because of it’s product mix alone.

Apple is Apple because of it’s unified user experience.

When it comes to the complexity of Internet advertising for small businesses, platform integration is as crucial as ever for today's SMB.

If I was a betting man, I ‘d say that Steve Jobs would be proud of us :)

Eric Rosen
Manager of Business Development
WebVisible

To learn more about why online advertising agencies worldwide make WebVisible as their Interactive Advertising Software Platform of choice, click here.

Some business owners skeptical if the long-term payoffs are worth the cost

You’ve seen the emails and heard the radio ads. Internet-based “daily deal” coupons are becoming a large part of the online advertising industry. But are such offers worth the cost for an auto repair shop or other small to medium-sized business? Some say no, while other business owners report they are gaining new customers–and profits–from the venture.

A June 2011 survey of small businesses by MerchantCircle finds that the leading reason companies like daily deals is customer acquisition (58%). At the same time, the top reason for not offering a daily deal again (42.4%) was their failure to attract new customers. Hmmm, perhaps more data will help answer our question.

Two surveys back up the belief that daily deals attract new customers. The first, a survey conducted by Utpal M. Dholakia at Rice University, found that new customers made up more than 77% of deal buyers. All of them spent over the value of the deal offer and, on average, about 20% became repeat customers. The second study, done by ConsumerSearch.com and The About Group, discovered that an overwhelming majority of those who had used a daily deal returned– even without another discount. Fifty-three percent of redeemers went on to become regular customers.

Businesses who were skeptical about the value of daily deals expressed concern about giving discounts to consumers who would have patronized the establishment anyway. According to a ForeSee Results survey, there is some basis for this concern. The largest share of daily deal users – thirty-eight percent—said they were already loyal to the business offering a deal. However, nearly a third of those taking advantage of a daily deal special were new customers, and the same percentage were customers who had either visited only occasionally or had stopped patronizing the establishment altogether.

So what’s the answer? Are daily deals worth it? Looks like the jury is still out. But one thing is certain. As this graphic demonstrates, an on-going search engine advertising campaign will put in front of people who are ready to buy, when they’re ready to buy – not when your “daily deal” happens to hit their email box. This is especially important in the auto industry, where people who need services or products typically need them right now.

WebVisible has more than 10 years of experience helping local businesses establish an effective online marketing presence through fully-managed online search advertising programs that generate predictable results. Contact WebVisible today for more information on how search advertising can help grow your auto-related business.

 Yahoo! Finance recently posted an article titled "WebVisible Relocates Headquarters to Los Angeles' Electronic Arts Campus, Embracing Collaborative Vibe of Westside Entertainment Complex." Quoted was our CEO Ron Burr, commenting on our new surroundings at the EA Games building and mentioning that we are a team of employees that "work hard together and...play hard together." From my 5 years of experience at WebVisible, Inc. this is one of the main perks that has always stood out. Being part of a company usually entails a professional, and for lack of a better way to say it, staunch, corporate environment where employees are seen more as numbers, instead of names. Although WebVisible, Inc. maintains a high level of professionalism, which is shown through our award-winning interactive advertising software platform and our proven ability to help small companies generate more business, we always set aside time to "play."

There is an unchallenged open-door policy where an employee can approach any member of our executive team, including the CEO, and strike a conversation. The executive team knows each of us personally and always takes the time to say “hi” and ask how we are doing. Employees at a larger corporation might never even see most of the executive team, let alone speak with them on a daily/weekly basis.

Our HR and Marketing departments are always looking for ways to make work more fun by including all employees in company events and games which helps us to get to know one another and also provides a low stress, positive working environment. Although this is the case at a lot of other companies, every employee in these two departments knows each person in the company by name which gives the feeling that you are being invited to an event by a close friend, instead of being put on a list simply because you are an employee.

WebVisible's Bowling Extravaganza, 2011

 As I mentioned earlier, I hit my 5-year mark in April of this year and am proud to belong to such a strong company that actually takes pride in each and every one of its employees.

Many people are confused about what negative keywords are— or how they work.  Negative keywords are simply a way to more effectively manage unwanted traffic in your campaign. With 90% of people online using search engines, there is certainly a push (and necessity) to refine search terms and weed out internet users that do not relate to the services or products you wish to provide or sell.

Let’s say you own a carpet cleaning business that specializes in steam cleaning services for carpet and upholstery.  The types of people you don’t want to attract are people looking to rent machines or buy supplies for their own steam cleaning machines. Adding words with a hyphen (minus sign) at the front creates a negative keyword. For your particular campaign, you might see these negative keywords:

-rental
-supplies

By adding these negative keywords, your ads won’t show when people search for those specific terms.  Therefore, if a customer was to type “steam machine rental”, then your ad would not appear because it contains the term “rental”. The same would apply if the word “supplies” was included in the search term phrase (eg. “steam machine supplies”).

Adding negative keywords to your campaign can have positive and beneficial effects—improving your chances of reducing cost per click and increasing return on investment. By filtering search terms in your favor, negative keywords help you gain more quality leads and decrease time and money wasted on unwanted traffic.

When choosing negative keywords, it is imperative to only use terms that do not apply to your services.  Otherwise, you could potentially harm your campaign’s performance by hindering relevant customers from finding you online.  Therefore, it is essential to the success of your campaign that both the keywords and the negative keywords are chosen carefully to represent your business and service.

*According to http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/Generations-Online-in-2009.aspx

• Impressisons: Typically, search ads are measured by “impressions”, which is the number times your ad is displayed to searchers.
• Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of viewers who click on your ad to learn more.
• Conversion rate: Arguably the most important metric of all is conversion rate, or lead rate, which is the percentage of people who clicked on your ad and then took the next step to contact you or provide their contact information because they have a need for your service.  Those are the people you’re trying to capture with search advertising.

It is also important to remember that the quality of long tail keywords is just as important as quantity. For example, 50 poorly-selected search phrases can be ineffective and result in zero leads, while 35 clear, specific search phrases may deliver an abundance of leads. 

Unfortunately, there is no formula for choosing effective long tail keywords. Often times the difference between effective and ineffective long tail keywords is the result of years of research defined by market variables, advertiser budget, business category and geo-targeted region. Unless advertisers had the benefit of advertising experts on their team, it can prove difficult to ensure that the long tail keywords they are choosing are truly effective.


Negative Keywords: Avoiding the Wrong Audience

Negative keywords are terms that represent business you do not want to attract, and therefore are used to prevent ads from being shown. For example, an attorney might want to attract clients that search for "Chapter 7 Bankruptcy" or "Chapter 11 Bankruptcy", while legal services related to family law, such as "child custody” and "divorce" take too much time and are not as profitable.  Defining the latter terms as negative keywords prevents the attorney’s ads from being displayed when someone searches for "child custody" or "divorce". Just like long tail keywords, negative keywords can significantly improve campaign performance by reducing the number of clicks by poor quality leads, which reserves your ad budget for higher quality leads.

WebVisible also found that the number of negative keywords used in a campaign also had a strong affect on campaign performance. Our study’s results show that the campaigns with the highest number of leads per campaign dollar had between 1 to 5 negative keywords in addition to the right number of positive long tail keywords.

When looking at the same campaigns with monthly budgets of $1,000, those between 1-5 negative keywords also generate an average of 10 more leads per month than campaigns with 0 negative keywords. The data indicates that using negative keywords sparingly can improve performance, but using too many negative keywords can restrict lead flow unnecessarily and degrade campaign performance.

It is important to look carefully at the keywords you are utilizing in your campaign, and ensure that you are not only selecting long tail positive keywords, but that you are eliminating advertisement in areas of your business that are not profitable.

Dangerous Keywords Ahead

Typical analytics programs used on search engines such as Google can tell advertisers which keywords are popular to searchers, and receive a high number of clicks. However, clicks do not always represent the full story. To really understand which keywords are most effective for a campaign, advertisers must look at conversions – the phone calls, form fills, emails or text messages that are generated from your online ad.

Dangerous keywords are those that are highly clicked, yet still show a low conversion rate when you look across an entire transaction process. Often times, due to the popularity and demand for these keywords, advertisers will pay top dollar for these dangerous keywords, with little or no knowledge of the actual conversion history. Advertisers run the risk of spending a majority of their budget on these kinds of keywords, and receive little or no return for their dollars.

How do you find out what these dangerous keywords are? Unfortunately, the only way to identify dangerous keywords is to analyze historical conversion data. Advertisers would need to extensively research their keyword conversions over time, and compare results to thousands of other campaigns across major search engines over time.  This requires not only the analytics technology, but also massive amounts of conversion data, which is not readily available even to search engine companies, much less small business owners.  

With more than 100,000 online campaigns under our belt, and data from nine years of managing search ads for our clients, WebVisible has developed KPEye, a keyword performance engine that analyzes years of historical data as well as real-time market data, to help our clients optimize their advertising budgets.  With KPEye, WebVisible Account Managers can build high performing keyword lists for many types of businesses, free of any dangerous keywords, and optimized with negative and long tail keywords that drive the right traffic to your door.

Summary
Optimizing keywords is a very time-consuming exercise that requires massive amounts of search history, conversion data, analysis, testing and refinement. If search analytics isn’t one of your hobbies, consider using a service to manage your online advertising campaign.  You might see a considerable increase in ROI by taking advantage of experienced Account Managers, Creative Managers, and Performance Managers who regularly monitor your campaign results and fine-tune your keywords to deliver targeted impressions, high CTRs, and most importantly, the highest number of leads for your campaign dollar.

Blogging live from Interactive Local Media 2010 in Santa Clara, CA, Carla Fitzgerald, WebVisible's VP of Marketing gives an update:

Topics today addressed a variety of local content channels:  Local News, Local Radio, Local Search, Local Deal-of-the-Day offers.  With so many options to reach consumers, advertisers have tough decisions to make about where they should invest and what will deliver the best ROI.   Along these lines, the partner from Google Ventures (investment arm of Google) said there is a huge opportunity for companies that provide analytics to small business that helps them to understand which customer acquisition and retention programs work.   SMB’s need “visibility and actionable information” to manage their online investments because it’s overwhelming.  I was happy to hear that since “visibility and actionable information” is exactly what WebVisible is offering with our Merchant Center application for advertisers. 

There was a lot of talk about the fact that “local” is not a static, geographic radius from a business or service area.  What the consumer sees as “local” depends on what they are looking for:  if it’s a regular purchase, like dry cleaning, then local needs to be convenient to work or home;  if the need is for a special event like a concert or show, then “local” can be a lot further away and the price or offer really matters, and if it’s for a critical service like tooth replacement, then the location and price are only part of the decision – the credentials and reviews are just as important.  Again, this multi-dimensional view of “local” is something our founder, Kirsten Mangers, has been talking about for years.  (WebVisible is validated once again!)

The hot topics of Social and Mobile get “merged” when discussing “mobile location check in” services like Gowalla and Foursquare.  (Google Ventures said they’re looking at 35 different companies that offer this type of technology!)  These solutions can help advertisers with brand awareness, reputation management, generating more foot traffic, loyalty programs, and promoting onsite deals.  These are not specific to small business, but definitely focused on driving local business, and in some cases, driving loyalty to big brands.  What’s the SMB message?  Most importantly, understand what your customers care about and how they like to engage you.  If you’re a local bar targeting hip young adults, then location check-in may be just the right thing for you, but if you’re an attorney, probably not… unless you’re trying to stir up a class action of some kind!

There is an explosion of digital marketing technologies and services being developed, and even the experts at this conference are not sure which approaches will pay off for advertisers in the long term.  Regardless of the sexy new technologies available, the message was still clear that small business still needs simpler, measureable ways to promote themselves today.  We couldn’t agree more!

•  Google Instant is definitely affecting viewer behavior as search results and ads change while the searcher is typing.  The opportunity for “disruptive” advertising is now more prevalent.  For example: a searcher may be thinking about a “beach front vacation in Miami”, and as she types, results and ads for “beach front vacations in Mexico” pop up, with special promo offers, and now the searcher is drawn to that idea even though it wasn’t her original search intent.

•     Google Preview will show a thumbnail image of a landing page where search terms are highlighted on the page, so viewers can “preview” to decide if they want to actually click there.  Two implications on this:  1 – the aesthetics of your landing page are now just as important BEFORE the user clicks as they are AFTER!  2- If the highlighted search phrase on the preview page is not displayed in the “context” that the viewer had in mind, they won’t click.  Net-net:  landing pages matter more than ever in search for generating traffic and leads!

• Customer reviews aren’t just good for an SEO boost, those little stars actually draw people’s eyes to your listing!  However, from an SEO perspective, it’s better to have 5 reviews on 20 sites, than 100 reviews on 1 site.

We tweet. We poke. We "like." And we share. Sometimes referred to as the "Millennials," our generation relies on social networks like Twitter and Facebook as a means to spread the good news of what's going on in our lives, including the new, innovative businesses we create.  It seems like every day I am being invited to "like" a friend's new business, whether it be napkin printing, t-shirt designing, or their newly released CD.  So you've got the Facebook thing down, how do you best use it to grow your business? Here are some tips:

1. Status updates rock. Because they turn up on our friends' news feed why not include special deals for those paying attention (think free downloads, % off products/services, etc).
For example: "New t-shirt designs available! Receive 25% discount on your next purchase of $50 or more when you enter code: THISDESIGNROCKS.

2. We're obsessed with pictures. Let us know what you're doing by capturing the moments of production from beginning to end, your product in use, and so on. If we're fans, we are interested.

3. Pose questions. By letting your fans chime in on your thoughts or latest work, they feel connected. It will help you better serve them.

4. Contests bring interaction AND business. If you're interested in your fans, they will become interested in you and your products. Plus, submissions give you the upper hand to recognize who your audience is.

5. Suggest your page to your friends so they can suggest it to theirs. The more fans you have, the more your message is being received.

Keep it short and sweet so you don't bore your friends. Research some of the bigger brands to see how they interact with their fans based on the content they post and model your effort along the same lines. Part of being an entrepreneur involves creating things with your unique twist on it, so take that mindset to your Facebook page. Here are some pages that know what's up:

Kodak
Billabong
Altamont Apparel
Jason Mraz
Roman Cucina

Friendly Reminder: Plagiarism is a problem in the classroom, not in the real world. Mock successful strategies, but be on the lookout for trademarks because you can't rip those off! However, be sure to provide your unique take on things. After all, it is your view that makes your offering valuable!

- Allison Lopez, Creative Assistant, Marketing

 

Far too often, we hear business owners say, "I spent $5,000 to have someone build my Web site, but nothing is happening; new customers are not calling." Also common is, "I put a lot of time, money and energy into my company's Web site. Now you tell me that I need a Landing Page. That's sounds like another headache. What's the difference? Just use my Web site."

To help this analysis, let's agree on a couple of quick definitions. Web sites typically explain many aspects of your business so that visitors can learn a lot about your company. Most Web sites have brochure-style pages that focus on About Us, Our Products, Our Owners or Employees, Our Customers, and Directions. Visitors could spend 30 minutes or more navigating the site to learn about the business (if they're VERY interested). In contrast, Landing Pages consist of 1 or 2 pages that are designed specifically to cause visitors to respond immediately. The "call to action" in the Landing Page gives businesses the opportunity to convert visitors into paying customers. Through careful design and analysis, Landing Pages address the harsh reality that the attention span of online visitors often lasts just a few seconds, and they will make a decision about you in a blink. If you doubt this behavior, watch how quickly someone in your family moves from page to page when looking for products or services.

The Facts on Converting Customers
For several years, we have been analyzing the performance of Landing Page designs versus Web sites on how well each converts a visitor into a lead. To track the conversion performance of Web sites, we provide a "Proxy" service that tracks when visitors respond in such a way that the business can convert them into paying customers. In contrast, Landing Page conversions are tracked directly. Using data from several hundred campaigns where customers have specifically declined the use of a Landing Page (not a "Best Practice", mind you), we are able to compare conversion results across a variety of industries. Now, let's look at the startling results. In a study of 3,746 campaigns, Web site visitors converted to leads 6.6% of the time, while Landing Page visitors converted 10.7% of the time. In other words, Web sites were only 62% as effective as Landing Pages in converting visitors into leads. This means that if you are not using a Landing Page, you're letting a large number of prospective customers get away! More specifically, if your WebVisible Package is $1000 per month, you could get more than 5 additional leads every month using a Landing Page than if you use only your Web site. FIVE leads every month! (Landing Pages are already included in your package, so if you're not using them, call us now and we'll make the change.)

Case in Point
If you're not a numbers person, listen to what Rudy Mendoza of Jewelry Sales & Design has to say: "We spent tens of thousands of dollars on our Web site (with another company) and got almost nothing out of it. We spent $3,000 for this whole WebVisible landing page package, and I'm very sure that we got much more out of it in the first couple months. We've had thousands of hits, and we're getting a lot more phone calls from those hits." Our conversations with Small Business Owners tell us, time and time again, that Web sites alone are not the best vehicle for acquiring new customers. A well-designed Landing Page to complement your Web site is critical to generating new leads.

You Decide
You will make important decisions on how to spend your marketing dollars, and the role of your Web site is just one important decision. Our data clearly shows that for the purposes of acquiring new customers, Landing Pages are superior to taking online visitors directly to your Web site. Undoubtedly, there are exceptions and we'll work with you to test approaches if you feel that your business is the exception. And, please do not feel bad if you've put a lot of money into your Web site. Your Web site is an important business asset that helps lower your cost to serve your customers and helps your customers find information for repeat purchases. If you have a marketing issue that is keeping you up at night, I'm all ears. You can reach me at Dr.Doug@webvisible.com.

Dr. Doug LaBahn is the son of a small business owner, a founder (and survivor) of several small businesses, and a former Professor with a PhD in Marketing. His writings provide "straight talk" about online marketing, not the "hype". Bring Dr. Doug the tough questions that keep you lying awake at night and he'll bring you the facts.

 

WebVisible creates great landing pages. But did you know that getting a visitor to your landing page is only half the battle? What happens after the click makes all the difference in turning a casual visitor into a repeat customer.

Internet advertising, and especially local online advertising, aims to accomplish 3 goals. The first is getting your business ad to show when a person is searching for the products or services you offer. The second is getting that visitor to click on your ad by using ad copy that is relevant to the keyword and offering a compelling promotion. And finally, using a relevant landing page to entice the prospect to engage with your business. Then the second half of the conversion process starts: generating more business by securing this customer and encouraging repeat buying.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself regarding your landing page:

• Does my landing page present a clear identity of my business to the prospect? Make sure your company logo is visible as one of the first and best graphics that the visitor sees.
• Does my landing page copy and graphics relate to my ad - and ultimately, the keyword -  that the visitor originally typed into the search engine? The more relevant your landing page is to the original query, the better chance you have of converting that prospect into a customer.
• Does my landing page include a clear call to action? There are a plethora of ways a visitor can connect with you. The top two ways to connect to most small businesses is through a phone call or a form fill. Regardless, is it clear to the visitor what you wish their action to be? Make sure the phone number is large and near the top of the page. Make sure the form is above the fold and can be seen at first glance.
• Does my landing page present a compelling offer to my prospect? The generic 10% off is fine, but it's just that - generic. Offer something that addresses a core need of your audience. For instance, a cosmetic dentist might offer a free electric toothbrush or whitening procedure. A plumber might offer free slab leak detection when they perform requested repairs. These offers are more tangibly related to the service than simply 10% off.

Finally, the last item that will help your Internet advertising succeed is your response to prospect engagement. It is of the utmost importance that someone at your business is available to answer the phone when a prospect calls and that the prospect's form fill and email are answered promptly.  The quicker you're able to connect with a prospect, the more likely they'll find value in your business.  So remember, getting a click is good. Engaging a prospect with a relevant landing page is better. And converting a prospect into a customer is best.

-Contributed by Robert Voccola, Marketing Manager, WebVisible Inc

Networking time at conferences allows one to meet folks you’d likely never encounter in your usual environment. I spoke with a sixth generation Texan the other night who is the CEO of a new solar power business. In Houston, Texas – the heart of the oil and gas industry. This man has tremendous confidence in his new company’s technology, and recognizes that just as solar power is “new school” marketing has moved toward new methods for generating attention for a new business. Thus, he is attending SMX West to learn all he can about search engine optimization (SEO) and online marketing. His company hasn’t even developed its website yet – but here he is, gaining knowledge BEFORE the creation of the website so the SEO elements can be included when the site is built. Smart guy!

SEO is the focus of numerous sessions at SMX West. How to write copy for websites with an eye to SEO success, how to craft keyword lists, how to deal with the technical elements of website building and where social media fits into an SEO strategy all have been offered to conference participants. With an eye to what will provide the greatest success in organic listings and high rankings for a business website these sessions contain nuggets of wisdom gleaned from years of work in the online marketing industry.

Among some of the tips I gathered while attending these sessions:
• Don’t “stuff” your site with keywords simply to get the words in the content.
• Do write compelling content that includes key phrases that users search by. By doing research you can determine what the most relevant keywords/phrases are.
• Don’t overuse flash or images. Search engines don’t do a good job of crawling those elements and without text content your site isn’t going to perform well.
• When creating SEO plans for clients learn the lingo of your customer and his/her business/industry. Use the language that people searching for the product or service would use. Employ those terms in content and key phrases.
• Don’t spend time talking about how great your business is – tell searchers what you can do for them. No one wants to listen to someone talk about how great THEY are. But potential customers ARE interested in what a business can provide them. That’s why they’re searching in the first place.
• Do craft titles like headlines – they appear fully in organic listings and are compelling to users.

There are many more aspects of SEO that I could address, but space won’t allow. Suffice to say that attending SMX West has provided me with a plethora of insights that I plan to employ to assist customers in producing effective marketing campaigns. Stay tuned for more from the conference.

-Contributed by Debra Northart, Director at WebVisible, blogging live from SMX West.

As we start this new year and embark on a new decade, it’s great to reflect a little at just how far we have come. Just think back for a brief moment…what comes to mind? It’s not like we are picturing mail being delivered on a horse and telegrams being the fastest form of communication… now it’s more like… remember when I got the newspaper delivered to my doorstep daily vs. my mobile device. Technology is advancing at a mind blowing pace and the speed of improvements that are being made seem to be growing at an exponential rate!

One area where we see this taking place is in the world of internet marketing. Some of you might have heard of it but don’t know quite what it means, while others are already utilizing this form of advertising and seeing huge results in the boost to your business.

WebVisible is an amazing company that is an absolute expert when it comes to local online advertising and I want to give you all a quick look at what I do here since I’ve joined the Account Management Team.

Ah, the life of an account manager…Here at WebVisible I make sure that accounts are performing and business owners are happy! It’s a perfect fit for me as what I enjoy doing is simply helping people do what they like to do best and be a part of ensuring their success. As an account manager I get to take the customer (Business Owner) and really focus on what their business goals are. The cool thing is I get to be a part of directly helping them achieve those goals. From the background setup work such as getting them logged in to the Merchant Center, our proprietary online customer service center, to keeping them posted on how well their online advertising campaign is performing, through connecting customers to them, my objective is to monitor the success of a campaign through the amount of “connections” that we provide for a client through phone calls, emails, and other methods the client uses to be contacted. Every day I keep a close eye on how well the campaign is doing and constantly work to improve it to generate the best results possible. I’ve got to admit that our Geneva Technology Platform is award winning for a reason. It really makes my job pretty easy, but all in all, as an account manager here at WebVisible, as long as customers are happy and able to focus on doing what they do best, then it’s a winning relationship that will continue to grow and achieve success!

-Contributed by Jacob Gardner

If the future is local and hyper-local, then the future is search

By Kevin Ryan, CMO WebVisible

New research from Unisfair finds that for 2010, 60 percent of online marketers will be focused on new customer acquisition. The same study found that toward this goal, 75 percent of marketers will be increasing spending in social media, while 51 percent will be increasing spending in SEM and SEO. A 75 percent increase in social media marketing? Really?

Search engines are the first place consumers and business owners turn to when looking for any product or service, including those that are local—and local is the fastest growing segment of online. Marketers know this. And despite this fact, it appears for 2010, there will continue to be a large disparity between consumer purchase decisions and how marketers think they should reach consumers. Which is too bad because I think social media marketing so far is unproven.

Is social media the best way to reach local consumers? While there are lots of new technologies out there, search isn’t going anywhere. Certainly not for local and hyper-local advertising—search is the cornerstone for both—regardless of what you are reading about social media. Nobody’s Facebook page or Yelp review, or Tweet is going to trump a quick Bing or Google search for local products and services.

Every year, consumers become more reliant on search engines—we’ve all seen the research. Close to 90 percent of consumers turn to the Internet first when researching local products or services. Local and hyper-local are the future of online. However, with all the hype about social media marketing, I am seeing a clear disconnect.

For example . . .

In the last year, Scott A. Bates, Co-Owner of Christopher Scott Homes, a WebVisible client, ran a 30-day Internet advertising campaign. During the course of his campaign, Bates received 569 local visitors to the website and eight calls regarding new business. These are outstanding results for the first month with any kind of advertising campaign, far exceeding Bates’ expectations.

In 30 days, during the worst housing and new-construction-start economy since the great depression, Christopher Scott Homes (CHS) received several new leads and closed a new custom home contract. CHS spent a total of $510. This means the average cost for each person who saw the CHS ad and went to the website totaled less than $1. With that one sale, Bates paid for his search engine marketing for the next 20 years.

For local advertising, reach, operational cost, and lead generation are everything. Local may be the fasting growing, untapped, interactive advertising vertical—spending on interactive advertising beat spending on traditional advertising in August 2009. However, the businesses that make up Local aren’t interested in funding a social media widget campaign—they want results. They want a search campaign that works.

Location, location, location

If the rise of Internet search has taught us anything—like all good real estate, location means almost everything. Search has become the digital equivalent of the local market place. If your store is not located on Main Street where the buyers are actively looking, no one will come inside to buy. Sixty-five percent of online searchers expect local business results to be within 20 miles of them. The key to growth in any business is marketing where consumers are looking. While that also means local businesses should not ignore new media marketing—search is still king.

The benefits of search marketing

From my perspective, it is marketing malpractice not to advise your local media clients to spend on search engine marketing; here are three reasons why:

SEM is measurable

In this economy when every local business is closely tracking operating costs like marketing, SEM is a must. With newspaper readership dropping an average of three to four percent every six months, we know that print ads are losing value because fewer consumers see them. With SEM you can track exactly how many people saw an ad, how many visited a website, and how many called that business.

SEM can be geographically, locally targeted

If you work with hyper-local clients, they need to know that consumers like to research online and buy local. SEM allows local businesses to run inexpensive seasonal and geographically relevant advertising campaigns. Consumers searching locally for specific goods and services are predisposed buyers—they are already looking, all your hyper-local clients need to do is make it easier for consumers to find them.

SEM is flexible and predictable

SEM allows local businesses to budget advertising costs on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. With search, businesses receive a steady flow of leads, enabling them to predict sales over the course of the campaign. When local businesses have a better idea of how many consumers are purchasing their goods or services, they can think about other things—like expanding their business.

As the Internet has evolved, the popularity of using search engines to help make purchase decisions has skyrocketed. Search marketing is now more powerful than ever and by far the most efficient way to get your message in front of consumers. Take it from Scott Bates—when search campaigns pay for themselves in one or two months, there is no reason why any business should fail to have Search as a primary component of their marketing budget.