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Archive | May, 2010

Should I Advertise on AdWords Content or Search Network?

Posted on 25 May 2010. Tags: Advertising, AdWords, Content Network, Google, Google Adword, online marketing trends, Search, Search engine marketing, Search Engines, Web search engine

Advertising on the Content Network vs. Search Network

In the last few years Google AdWords has gotten increasingly popular. One of the biggest reasons for this surge in popularity is the wide reach AdWords can help companies achieve. The extensive network of Google-related sites and the lack of a minimum ad spend makes it so that even companies with the most minimal ad budget can advertise online with AdWords and know that their ads can be seen by thousands overnight.

When setting up an ad campaign with Google AdWords one important decision that you will need to make is whether to advertise on the Content Network, the Search Network, or both. Google’s Content Network places ads on sites based on the content of the sites and how well it aligns with your ad. The Search Network places ads on Search Engines where potential customers are looking for information and products.

AdWords Learning Center

Content Network
When an advertiser utilizes the Content Network the ad he/she creates will be placed on sites that have similar themes to the keywords that are chosen for that ad. So for instance say you are using “gourmet coffee beans” as a keyword, using the Content Network your ad will be featured on coffee review sites, sites selling coffee makers, and perhaps coffeehouse blogs. With your ad on these related sites you can choose to pay each time that ad is clicked on, or each time it appears for someone to see. Content Network advertising is mostly used to create brand awareness. The thought behind this style of advertising is that when someone is searching for a coffeemaker and sees your ad they may or may not click on it, but due to the brand loyalty that can developed with a well structured ad, perhaps after they order their coffee maker they will need some coffee beans and go to your site.

Search Network
When an advertiser utilizes the Search Network the ad he/she creates will be placed on Google search engines and when a customer types in a keyword you are using your ad will be pulled up on the right-hand side or top area of the search results page. In the same example from above, when a potential customer goes on Google and types in “gourmet coffee beans” your ad can appear. Customers then click on the ad and are taken to your site where they can find the item or items they are seeking. With the Search Network you only pay each time you ad is clicked, not each time it appears. The benefit to this style of advertising is that you find the consumer at the very moment they intend to purchase “gourmet coffee beans.”

Criticisms
The question of advertising on the Content Network versus the Search Network is a divisive one.

Criticizers of the Content Network say that while it can reach more people the traffic it creates is not qualified in any way. Based on our coffee example, a click on your ad on the Content Network may be a person who, after searching for a coffee maker, is interested in seeing how much the coffee beans will run them if they buy the maker, thereby helping them make a decision on the coffee maker purchase. Or perhaps someone clicks on your ad after seeing that their local coffee house has started offering a new blend and wants to see if you have any customers who reviewed that product so they can decide if it is worth it to go down to the coffee shop and try it. Additionally, if an internet user is trying to find song lyrics that contain the phrase “coffee beans” or a movie with “coffee” in the title or even a celebrity with the last name “Bean” your ad may appear even though it is of no use to the searcher. While Google offers the ability to filter out sites that you do not think are relevant on the content network, it can tend to get tedious and is a hassle for the more general keywords.

On the other hand, criticizers of the Search Network say that many times consumers go online to search engines to do a lot of research before buying and you could just be throwing your money away if you are paying every time someone comparison shops from site to site looking for low priced gourmet coffee beans.

Picking A Direction
Some advertisers split their budget between the Search Network and the Content Network, whereas others just stick to one approach. When deciding what is best for your business you should decide on the goals you hope to accomplish with your online advertising and then pick your approach from there. Keep in mind that if you try one approach and do not get the results you were hoping for, there is enough flexibility in the AdWords system to change your approach at any time.

More marketing help!

-Kate Pierce eCommerce Specialist

Posted in Internet Marketing1 Comment

Drip Marketing: Slow and Steady Wins the Customer

Posted on 20 May 2010. Tags: Advertising mail, Business, Drip Marketing, Hopper Systems, Marketing, Marketing and Advertising, Mass marketing, Sales

Do it right and you can convert more leads. Do it wrong and your customer gets the water torture.

By Rick Cook | September 23, 2008

Drip marketing is the rather inelegant term for a marketing campaign that relies on repeated contact, or “touches,” with a potential customer.

Unlike a leaky faucet, drip marketing is no accident. Successful drip marketing involves a carefully planned and thoughtfully targeted series of communications that will get your message across to customers and keep your company’s name in their minds. As prospects move through the early stages of the sell cycle, drip marketing helps ensure that those potential customers become your actual customers.

Advantages

Building awareness is one of the most important advantages of drip marketing. It fixes your company name and message in the potential customer’s mind.

Education is another important function. Drip marketing can inform prospects about your products and your industry by giving useful information while building trust in your company.

Who It’s Good For

Drip marketing is ideal for high-value products with a long sell cycle, especially high-ticket items which are purchased at infrequent intervals. For example, mortgage companies and real estate agencies are big on drip marketing. So are health and life insurance agents. IT vendors whose products are purchased at infrequent intervals are also a rich market for drip marketers.

Drip marketing is especially effective if you have some insight into the prospect’s buying cycle. Some kinds of goods, such as business computers and automobiles, tend to have a definite lifespan and are replaced every few years.

Aim Your Drips

Drip marketing needs careful planning for maximum effect. You must decide on a basic theme or themes that you want your campaign to drive home.

But the same message endlessly repeated loses effectiveness. Even though the themes remain the same, drip marketing requires variation in the way you present the message.

Kissing the Minimum Number of Frogs

On a percentage basis, drip marketing is not very efficient. It requires you to contact a number of people a number of times to drive sales. This doesn’t mean drip marketing can’t generate a lot of sales. Properly done, it can turn up many good prospects. But it does mean that you need to carefully focus your drip-marketing efforts. Paradoxically, while drip marketing uses mass-marketing techniques like email and direct mail, it becomes most effective when the messages are customized for specific audiences.

Once you’ve decided on your basic themes, you need to analyze your prospect list to determine which presentations are likely to be most effective with different groups. For example, a real estate agency will have some potential clients who are buying their first homes, some who are retiring and looking to downsize and some who are moving into the area. Each of these groups will benefit from a different approach. First-time buyers are likely to be interested in affordability. Older prospects looking to downsize will probably be more concerned about issues like tax implications and how to handle the sale of their existing home. By segmenting your prospects, you can provide them with the appropriate series of messages.

Drip Systems

Fortunately, drip marketing lends itself to a high degree of automation. Equally fortunately, there are a number of tools to help you run a drip-marketing campaign, or alternatively a number of companies who will run your campaign for you.

Many drip-marketing products are specialized for particular industries. For example Norvax Inc.’s
LeadMiner is designed for insurance agencies selling health insurance. Agent 360 from RENWare Inc. is designed for real estate agents. Other software programs, such as Swiftpage, are more general and will work for many kinds of businesses.

Beyond the industries they serve, drip products vary enormously in what they do. In fact, drip marketing is more a buzzword than a product description. One must look beyond the term to see what a product actually offers.

The most basic drip marketing products are email auto-responders. These simply send a reply, or a series of replies, to queries emailed to your business. Even within this category there is variation. Some of these products, like Swiftpage, automatically assemble a leads database in addition to sending out email messages. Others, such as TriggerTouch, will start with visitor information from your Web site. Most of these programs will send a series of messages, spaced over a period of weeks or months, in response to an initial query. In effect, they automatically launch a drip marketing campaign aimed at the potential customer. The more sophisticated programs allow you to vary the content of the messages as well as their timing depending on your evaluation of the contact. Some of them even have advanced features: LeadMiner can automatically generate current quotes to be included in the emails.

But drip marketing can be much more than just email. It can also include direct mail contact, newsletters, telephone calls or on-site visits. In fact, just about any form of customer communication can be integrated into a drip-marketing campaign. Some drip-marketing software will also automatically remind you to call the lead or send out mailings.

Some CRM programs, such as ACT4Advisors, which is built on Sage Software Inc.’s ACT! CRM program, come with features that let you set up a drip-marketing program. In the case of ACT! that includes a series of sample letters on various topics.

Finally, there are a number of companies that specialize in running drip-marketing campaigns, such as MyMarketingPartner Inc. They can help you create your message and analyze your prospects, and can provide you with prewritten or customizable materials aimed at the various target groups. You work out the basics and they do the rest.

Avoid the Spam Trap

Badly done drip marketing is Chinese water torture for prospects. They may remember you, but they’re unlikely to deal with you. Bombarding prospects with uninteresting or irrelevant messages is a great way to end up being ignored. In this day of spam filters and floods of junk mail, it’s all too easy to wind up as part of the background noise rather than a signal.

Email marketing is a particularly tricky business because of spam’s current choke hold on email campaigns. In fact, most people who get a message from a company with whom they’re not familiar are likely to assume it’s spam.

Another problem with email marketing is that malicious emails have made people wary of opening attachments such as newsletters or reports.

The basic way around this problem is content combined with trust. To overcome the spam barrier you need an interesting message. You have to say something in which your potential customers are likely to be interested. Often that means giving them tips or other useful information.

Second, you need to build trust. Your prospects must trust you to give them something they want and not send them viruses. This is one limit for sending newsletters as attachments to emails.

Personalization also builds trust, both in your emails and in your company. As much as possible, include your prospects’ names and other information — correct information — showing that they’re not just a name on a mailing list. Also include information about who you are. For example, an email signed by the sales rep who will handle the account is more effective, especially if the email is from that rep’s own email account.

Customizing on the Cheap

The big advantage of drip marketing is that it gives you a relatively low-cost, low-effort way of maintaining regular contact with leads who haven’t yet made the critical buying decision. You can do this by other means, of course, but drip marketing lets you touch a lot more people effectively without wasting a lot of work. With drip marketing you can have more contact with more prospects without overloading your sales force or breaking your budget.

Posted in Hopper Systems, Marketing 1010 Comments

What’s Drip Marketing?

Posted on 20 May 2010. Tags: Business, Drip Marketing, Hopper Systems, Marketing, Marketing and Advertising, Sales, Target market

If you’re in sales you already know that prospects are not always ready to buy when you’re ready to sell. Drip Marketing is a term used to describe an automated system that uses emails, newsletters, direct mail and postcards to continually drip out information to your list of prospects and customers. Developing a strategy for keeping in contact on a continuing basis is what will cause a prospect to buy from you rather than from one of your competitors.

Let’s examine more closely how drip marketing can increase your sales:

Stand Out From the Crowd

1. Build a relationship– Sending out regular messages to your target market allows you to share information about your business and assures the prospect that your relationship with them will not end with the sale.

2. Presell your prospects – Educate them and help them do their research. When they’re ready to make a purchase, who do you think they’re going to call?

3. Be persistent–Marketing experts recommend you have some sort of contact every 10-21 days to keep your name foremost in your prospects’ minds. Think about what information you already have that you could divide up and send to your prospect list. Brochures, white papers, manuals, FYI emails, etc.

4. Become the expert– Supplying your prospects with evidence that you know what you’re talking about will develop your image as an expert. What have you accomplished that positions you as a leader in your industry? Don’t be afraid to self-promote!

5. Be yourself–Studies have shown that prospects are more likely to make a purchase from someone they know and trust rather than a stranger who is selling a similar product. Don’t be afraid to let your personality shine. Let them see that you are a real person and that you care.

6. Mix it up– Prospects are bombarded with messages every day. It’s hard to cut through all the clutter in order to get your message noticed. Use a combination of email, postcards, direct mail, automated voice messaging, phone calls, Twitter, Facebook, etc. You never know which of your messages will connect with which prospect.

7. Fix your follow-up failure– An automated marketing database will allow you to make sure that no one falls through the cracks. Think of all the people you’ve met at networking events and trade shows. What about referrals and your past customers? If you’re like most salespeople, you have a pile of business cards on your desk with the intent to follow-up. Unless you have an automated system, regular follow-up rarely happens and many sales are lost.

8. Target your audience– As you have probably discovered, your target market can be divided into various subsets. Using a database allows you to further segment your market and personalize your messages accordingly. Your prospects will become purchasers if they can relate to your sales message, which will be different for every segment of your target market.

9. Eliminate your slow sales times–Just as people are nearing the end of one marketing cycle and making purchases, new people will just begin receiving your information, thus continuing the cycle. If you automate your marketing messages – such as via email auto responders or postcard campaigns – you will have a steady stream of sales.

10. Appreciate your current customers– Now that you have a customer base that has bought a product, you can use drip marketing to up-sell or cross-sell them to other products or services you offer. Your current customers are a goldmine as they already know and trust you.

While planning a drip marketing campaign will take time, the effort is well worth the investment. Once your automated system is set-up, it will decrease the amount of time you spend in trying to manually follow-up with people and increase the amount of sales you can make each month.