Ran across a great article from e.Marketer this morning regarding the growth of online ad spending within the realm of online marketing.  Nothing fancy here, just a couple of charts demonstrating the shift advertisers are making in their business marketing strategies.







Jeff Meuzelaar
Click Rain | Sioux Falls Marketing

In a previous post, I mentioned the concept of the quality score that Google places on each keyword within an ad group.  This blog post will shed some additional light on how the quality score is calculated and why it should be important to your business marketing strategy.

The concept of the quality score is to ensure that the most relevant content/ads receive a higher score, which in turn will help the ad become listed higher and cost less. 

The formula for the quality score is two-fold as it influences both the keyword's minimum bid and the keyword-targeted ad's position in the search results.  The precise formula for the quality score is a mystery; however, Google does give us a list of the basic components used - summarized below.

Optimizing for a keyword's minimum bid

• The keyword's historical clickthrough rate (CTR)
• Relevance of the keyword to the ad
• • For example, if you are targeting the keyword string of Sioux Falls Marketing but your ad copy does not contain this keyword string - you will receive a poor rating for this component
• Quality of landing page
• • Relevant content, navigability, load time, etc
• Historical CTR of the entire ad group

Optimizing for a higher ad position

• Historical CTR of the ad
• The ad's display url
• Matched keyword(s) on Google
• Relevancy of the keyword and ad
• Account history
• • Google actually takes into account the CTR of all the keywords and ads in your account

I'd also like to make another special note on the importance of relevant keywords within the ad copy.  If you're targeting the keyword string of business blogging, it is pertinent that this appears at least one time in the ad copy.  It seems very simple, until you begin accumulating an expansive list keywords!  The solution? Ad Groups.  
For more information straight from Google pertaining to AdWords, click here.

Happy PPC'n!

Jeff Meuzelaar
Click Rain
Sioux Falls Marketing

According to a recent report by Piper Jaffray gas prices are having a significant influence on online consumer spending.  Rather than making a trip from the suburbs to the local mall, many consumers are purchasing on the web.  What does this mean for small business online marketing?  All businesses need to get their act together and develop an internet marketing and e.marketing campaign.  Without online business development, you won't be able to take advantage of this shift in consumer spending mediums.  Drop us a line and we'll help you start the process.

Blogging for business is a topic that I am hearing more and more about in the online media realm.  In addition, blogging transparency (being who you say you are) in blogs, forums, etc. seems to go hand-in-glove with the topic.  I have had the opportunity to get several blogs off the ground recently for clients in a variety of industries, all of whom see blogging as a critical partner of crafting their brand personality as well as boosting SEO efforts.

If blogging is not part of your business marketing strategy, we should talk.  Look for more on this topic to come shortly. 

Your online marketing partner,
Paul

Another solid article today from eMarketer, this time on the importance of appearing on the first few pages of a search engine results page (serp).  While that is a very obvious statement, the numbers they share in the article reinforce how, more than ever before users attention span beyond the first serp is waning. The first paragraph of the article says in best:

Online search has become so efficient that most Internet users are now impatient with anything less than great results.

I would dare say that search engine optimization is the most important piece of a successful online marketing strategy.  Business blogging, paid search, social network marketing, and other internet marketing strategies are still pieces of the pie; however, if this article doesn't drive home the importance of a strong SEO strategy, well....

Internet penetration is something I get asked about all the time - specifically as it relates to South Dakota (many people are under the impression that SD just got electricity a few years back, thus, the "world wide internet" is something we only see in picture shows). 

Before diving into an online marketing campaign, good marketers want to know what their reach and frequency will be using the web as a communication vehicle.  eMarketer's daily goodness today was in regards to internet penetration by state in the US.  I've always had difficulty finding good data on this, but the National Telecommunications and Information Administration has a tight little report here that summarizes broadband penetration by state.  The report puts good ole' South Dakota above the likes of Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, and Iowa in terms of broadband penetration. Yee haw, little doggies!  A business marketing strategy must include a web component, and understanding the technical capabilities of your audience is important to any internet marketing plan.

Here are the highs and lows...props to eMarketer for the charts.

The Sioux Falls marketing landscape - as well as on the national scene - has been shifting in recent years, with traditional agency models (being all things to all people) giving way to specialized shops (we do this, only this, and do it very well). There is a great WSJ article here from 2007 on this very topic that is worth the read. 

While claiming to be leaders in all mediums is bold, fulfilling on that promise is nearly impossible. Social media is a perfect example. AdWeek had a great article recently on online marketing / social media and how the traditional agency model of "placing ads = placement dollars" does not jive with social media concepts.  Social media and traditional media are very, very different and trying to apply blanket principles to both can potentially do more harm than good.  Heck, faking a social media profile can get you jail time in Morocco.

At Click Rain, we have our niche, and it's online marketing. Not branding. Not print. Not broadcast media.  We know online marketing and how it relates to a business marketing strategy. If you want something outside of our core competencies, we'll be the first to tell you it's not a fit. In the meantime, we'll keep sharpeing our axe on what we do best. 

We all know that kids are getting pretty sharp when it comes to the web. Point in case, I can hardly do any work from home anymore without my 2-year old daughter begging (whining) to watch Dora the Explorer on my laptop.  She even understands that "stuff happens" when you click the mouse.  And Nickelodeon is no dummy, either.  Sprinkled throughout the site and in between the online videos is a smattering of self promotion for their programs, getting kids even further hooked on the shows and subsequentially, driving offline sales of pajamas, DVDs, and sippy cups.

eMarketer's article today on the savviness of kids on the web is not a huge shock, but it still is quite interesting.  Depending on your vertical, business marketing strategy now needs to include an online element for reaching the tween and pre-tween demographic.  There is a new generation out there that online marketers need to target, and they watch Sponge Bob. 

Have you ever used a search engine from your mobile phone?  Asking that question four, three, even two years ago would have gotten you a resounding number of no’s.   However, we are now in the days of the Treo, i760, Pearl, BlackJack, BlackBerry, iPhone….mobile search as component of an online marketing strategy is taking flight.  I recently read a great article over at eMarketer on mobile search and the advertising spending that is being realized on this growing medium.  A quote from the article:

 

eMarketer forecasts that mobile search spending in the US will grow from $34 million in 2007 to over $1.4 billion by 2012

 

That is some mad growth. Search marketing no longer means targeting the people sitting at a PC ready to make an online purchase or perform product research.  It now means getting in front of users looking for a restaurant while riding the subway, researching florists while pounding the elliptical, or making household purchase decisions while riding shotgun on the way to Target. The opportunity to cash in on mobile search as part of an overall business marketing strategy is there, and several are diving into the game here, here, here…..it will be interesting to see who grabs the brass ring.  You gotta love internet marketing.