Google Links To Apps Instead Of Websites On Android For Musicians. Will This Happen For Other Industries? July 6, 2014

Google Links To Apps Instead Of Websites On Android For Musicians. Will This Happen For Other Industries?

Google’s latest tinkering of their ecosystem is particularly noteworthy.

Recent studies have shown that close to 90% of people access the internet on their cell phones with apps rather than actual browsers. So like, if someone wanted to go to Google.com, they’re more likely to just tap on the Google app than open up their browser and go to google.com.

That being said, Google is experimenting on when someone searches for a musician like Katy Perry. So when someone searches Katy Perry, instead of getting a list of websites with content of Katy Perry, the user gets a list of apps with content of Katy Perry.

In theory, you could say that getting a list of apps is a better UX (user experience) than getting a list of websites.

So, will Google expand this experiment?

What happens if someone looking for airport transportation in Los Angeles gets a list of apps instead of a list of websites?

Does your small business have an app for your company? Are you ready for this??

In other words, if Google does expand this to other verticals, other industries, those businesses that have apps where most of the industry doesn’t, will benefit greatly.

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What’s The Next Major Internet Device? The TV! July 6, 2014

What’s The Next Major Internet Device? The TV!

According to an eMarketer study, 54% of Americans will have at least 1 internet connected TV. By 2018, the study says 71% of every American will have one.

What does this mean for marketers and small businesses?

The biggest impact is that it’s going to drive up the inventory of how much open spots there are for banner ads.

Which will thus drive the cost down even more, even with the cost already being dirt cheap.

Almost every single large company advertises with online banner ads. But a vast majority of small businesses still do not do banner ads. Why is this?

A lot of marketers in the industry that have had experience with banner ads misunderstand the value. Most marketers try and get clicks from banner ads to boost calls and new customers.

But banner ads are like TV advertising. Just because someone advertising an airport transportation company, doesn’t mean that an ad is going to convince them to buy plane tickets and make a town car reservation to take them to the airport.

The value of banner ads is to build brand awareness. It’s to boost the image of a company by advertising on other well known brands. It’s to increase the conversion rates between clicks to calls and calls to customers. It’s to build up a remarketing list to stay in contact with as many interested potential customers as possible. And for what it’s worth, Google is supposedly favoring websites that have bigger brands in search engine optimization.

All that being said, the more people that have TV’s that connect to the internet, the lower the price will go for what the banner ads cost. That’s the biggest take away here.

 

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Why Do You Need A Marketing Company To Help You Get On Google? (It’s Probably Not What You Think) July 6, 2014

Why Do You Need A Marketing Company To Help You Get On Google? (It’s Probably Not What You Think)

Why can’t you just do it yourself?

It would take a little work, but you could probably figure out how to pay Google to be advertised. But advertising on Google is different from most advertising platforms.

Most advertising platforms, you pay for say a full page ad in a magazine. And then whomever calls, calls. And you get what you get.

But Google is different because their pricing is auction based. What does that mean? It means the price per click is determined by what your competitors are bidding and willing to pay, per click.

The #1 reason why you need to hire a marketing company for advertising on Google is because if you don’t know how to target within Google, you’ll get a lot of junk calls and it’ll be hard to make money off the Google advertising. In other words, instead of making a profit off the Google advertising, you’d lose your money.

What is a junk call? A junk call is when someone calls you up asking you for a product or service you don’t have, don’t do and or don’t want to do. Or the person calling is too far away for you to help them out.

Most of your competition has hired marketing companies to do advertising on Google for them. Which means that they’re probably able to do the targeting better and getting better quality calls than you if you were doing it yourself. What does this mean?

With less junk calls and more quality calls, it means they’re likely getting more customers and making more money than you-doing-it-yourself. Why does this matter?

Because when your competition is making money from doing good targeting, they don’t mind spending more per click. Because even if the cost goes slightly up, theyre likely still making money.

But if you-doing-it-yourself is not making money and your cost goes up, it makes it even harder for you to profit off Google advertising.

What is targeting? It’s making sure the quality score and click through rates are as high as possible to drive down the actual cost per click. It’s making sure your business is advertising on the right platform. It’s making sure your business is advertised in the right cities and not advertised in the wrong cities. It’s making sure we have the right negative keywords to weed out the junk (our negative keyword lists are usually around 500). It’s making sure the right delivery method is chosen based on your business’ budget. It’s making sure to use the mobile bid adjuster if necessary. It’s making sure the call extension is set up correctly. It’s making sure to set frequency capping if needed. And the list goes on.

I definitely believe most small business owners can figure out how to pay Google for advertising, get clicks to their website. And even get calls. But calls aren’t good enough. Business owners spend money advertising because the goal is to get customers and in order to get customers, you have to get the right calls and have the right targeting.

If the targeting is done correctly, 80% of your calls should be quality and 20% junk. If half of your calls are junk, it’s going to be tough to make money. Meaning that you might get a customer or two, but it won’t be enough with the cost being so high.

Not knowing how to target within Google and getting too many junk calls is why most small businesses need a marketing company to make sure they’re getting quality calls that will lead to customers.

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Why Customwave Doesn’t Do Social Media Marketing June 12, 2014

Why Customwave Doesn’t Do Social Media Marketing

Last night, I was watching the Angels game and it so happened to be “social media night” at the stadium and it reminded me of people asking me from time to time if we do social media marketing, since it’s pretty trendy these days. My reaction is “no, we currently don’t”. And a lot of people are surprised, asking, “Well, if people want to do it for their business, don’t you want to make money off of it?”

2 Main Reasons Customwave Doesn’t Do Social Media

1) There’s two main ways to do social media marketing. The first is by spending time having conservation with people. It’s really no different than networking face to face. Something we can’t really do for a client.

I mean, some marketing companies try and network for small business clients, but it’s a double-edged sword. Meaning that there’s a lot of times networking with a client’s customers and potential customers, that the conversation could go bad and lead people to not like the business, rather than the other way around. So we stay out of it because we don’t want to do anything that would endanger Customwave’s most important asset: our business relationships with our clients.

2) The second main way to do social media marketing is to pay for Facebook pay-per-click ads.

For big companies, the advertising on Facebook is a decent deal because they like their brand everywhere. For small businesses, Facebook advertising is a rip off.

Yes, I know. Shocking thing to say right? Well, let me explain. I have specific reasons that have led me to this opinion.

The two main ways Facebook ads try and bring value is by helping the business get more customers and building brand awareness. Facebook fails at both.

For trying to get new customers, the biggest problem is that the pay-per-click price on Facebook is almost as much as Google. My theory is that marketers think clicks on Facebook are just as valuable as clicks on Google.

But Facebook and Google are two completely different advertising platforms.

Google has branded itself as a destination for people that have a need. That have intent to pay for something. When they’re ready to do something, they go to Google.

Facebook is a place where people go to socialize, relax, see how people are doing. Oh look, there’s an ad for something you’re interested in. Out of curiosity you might click on it. But just because the ad represents something you’re interested in, doesn’t mean you’re ready to call or pay money.

That is the fundamental difference between search engine marketing and display banner advertising. Someone going to a search engine like Google is way further in the sales cycle as being close to purchase. Where someone that clicks on a banner ad could be anywhere in the sales cycle.

For all the data Facebook has and all the targeting they can do, it doesn’t change the fact that Facebook sells banner ads.

Yet, the cost per click is almost as the same as what the clicks cost on Google. This is what leads businesses like Priceline to realize that Facebook advertising is not effective at bringing in new customers because the cost of the website traffic is way more expensive than it should be.

So you could say, OK, Facebook ads aren’t effective at getting new customers, but surely they would be good at boosting brand awareness, right? Well, it depends on if you don’t mind paying a premium for the privilege of advertising on Facebook.

What do I mean?

If you compare the cost of how much Facebook banner ads costs versus the cost of banner ads inside Google’s website network, the Facebook banner ads can cost double, triple, and sometimes quadruple what they cost on other websites.

In case you didn’t know the cost of each click is most determined within an auction format. Each advertiser puts in a bid of the max price they’re willing to pay per click and that’s the biggest factor in what the actual cost per click is.

Social media marketing is most effective for big companies that have tons of customers. Facebook, Twitter, etc. can be used to provide (or try to provide) better customer service. And they don’t mind paying a little more money to advertise on Facebook because they view it as a “relevant” placement. Which would then help make their brand more “relevant”.

It’s not that Facebook advertising doesn’t work for or doesn’t build brand awareness for small businesses. It does. But it’s just not a good deal when you can get banner ads on websites like nasdaq.com, forbes.com, latimes.com, cbssports.com, cnn.com for half the price. Or in some case a fourth of the price.

Plus, if we have a client that wants to do banner ads to increase brand awareness, an argument could be made that advertising on nbcsports.com, usatoday.com, tmz.com and others is more prestigious than Facebook.

If you’re running a small business, think about it. What makes you look like a bigger deal? An ad on Facebook? Or an ad on foxsports.com? An ad on Facebook? Or an ad on the chicagotribune.com? Ad on Facebook? Or an ad on abcnews.com?

I rest my case.

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People Do Not Like Stalker Ads June 11, 2014

People Do Not Like Stalker Ads

Have you ever gone to a website, leave the website, then see banner ads popping up all over the place for that website you’ve been on before? That happening is a new marketing technique called remarketing, which is great both for advertisers and consumers alike. I mean, if a consumer is going to have to look at ads anyway, better they look at ads that actually interest them, right?

Unfortunately, some marketers abuse this technique. Have you ever gone to a website, leave the website, then see banner ads popping up all over the place for that website you’ve been on before? And then see the same banner ad pop up 10 times a day? 20 times a day? Feeling as if the ad is stalking you, following you on every website you go on?

Yes, that happening is what is known in the industry as “stalker ads”.

Surprise! People do not like stalker ads.

So here’s the lesson: If you’re a marketer, do not run stalker ads. It will actually hurt your client’s brand and cause consumers to not like your client. I mean, businesses’ aren’t paying you to ruin their brand, right?

So here’s what you do! There’s a setting known as a frequency cap. It can set a max of how many times a day each person sees your banner ad. Perfect!

At Customwave, we usually set our frequency cap at 2 views per day. This way, our client’s banner ads blend in with everyone else’s banner ads and it just looks like the client advertises a lot, which is good for the brand!

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How To Market If Customers You’re Targeting Don’t Have Money June 10, 2014

How To Market If Customers You’re Targeting Don’t Have Money

From time to time people ask me what’s the biggest problem in internet marketing today in 2014. My response is that our client’s customers are broke and don’t have money.

Now, it’s not like this in every industry. Business executives still need airport transportation. People still need important packages delivered ASAP. But other industries like home remodeling, sign makers and even lawyers are struggling.

Specifically, the two problems is that some businesses are in the “WANT” business. Where customers want your service, but dont “NEED” your service. Someone might really want to remodel their kitchen, but they don’t have the money right now and have other, higher priorities. For lawyers and other businesses that charge a lot for their products or services, the problem is that the cost is too high.

It’s important to keep the clients customers in mind when figuring out the marketing strategy.

For instance, if I’m talking to a client in the “WANT business” that has a marketing budget of say $500 a month, my advice on how best to spend the money will be using it to stay in touch with every person that visits the website.

Because if the money goes towards Google advertising, the Google ads will get people to the client’s website. It’ll get the client calls. But it won’t likely produce customers for the client with the customers likely not being ready for one reason or another.

So what do we do?

Start with remarketing. With remarketing, we have the ability to track and stay in touch with every single website visitor by serving them banner ads on different websites throughout the internet. For instance, have you ever gone on a website before and then later on, start seeing banner ads for that website all over the place? That’s what remarketing is.

So let’s say there’s 100 people going on your website each month. Every month that goes by, you’ll be tracking and serving banner ads to another 100 people each month. After 6 months, you’ll be advertising to 600 people that have been on your website before. After 1 year, you’ll be advertising to 1,200 people that have been on your website before. And so on.

The value in this is that sooner or later, your former website visitors will be ready to do business with someone. Might be 2 weeks. Or 2 months. Or 6 months. But a lot will be ready at some point. In the meantime, you’re advertising your brand everyday to them. Reminding them. Building top of the mind awareness. And then the day will come when that former website visitor clicks on the banner ad and likely not only calls you, but becomes your customer too.

What else can you do?

Email marketing. There are ways we can collect email addresses from some of the people that go to your website by offering them discounts or free amenities if they submit their email address. So sending out an email blast every couple weeks is another way to stay in touch with people until their ready.

Regular display banner ads on different websites throughout the internet is a low cost and effective way of getting lots of people to your website and also increasing brand awareness. This will help too.

And finally, having a good reputation is important too. Like if you go to Google and type in your company name, it’s important no bad reviews or customer complaints pop up. If potential customers find bad reviews about your company, this can cause potential customers decide to not do business with you.

But vice-versa, positive reviews for your company can help lead to someone to be more likely to become your customers.

One of the most important things to remember about reputation management is that there’s tons of review websites out there, but the only way someone will ever go on any of them is if they show up in Google if someone types in your company name. So the main thing is to make sure is to focus on the review websites in the first 5 pages of Google when you search your company name. And if you have the budget, make sure you have no bad reviews in Bing and Yahoo as well.

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Want To Do Better In SEO? Target Products. Target Keywords Other Marketers Aren’t Targeting. May 19, 2014

Want To Do Better In SEO? Target Products. Target Keywords Other Marketers Aren’t Targeting.

Chris Silver Smith at Search Engine Land has generously shared a brilliant idea to help in SEO (search engine optimization).

In a nutshell, he says that when doing local SEO, instead of targeting a keyword that represents an industry like “hardware store los angeles”, he says to target keywords that represent products like “ball point hammer los angeles”.

Everybody targets industries, types of businesses, cities. Not as many are targeting products, destinations, etc.

The real victory in SEO to be had right now is targeting creative keywords other marketers and businesses haven’t thought to target.

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The Arms Race Is On: AT&T Buys Directv May 19, 2014

The Arms Race Is On: AT&T Buys Directv

The TV industry is about to go through some rapid changes due to people realizing they don’t have to pay their cable bill or dish bill when they can watch TV through the internet. And with more and more HD flat screen televisions having the ability to connect to the internet, this phenomenon has been accelerated.

About a month ago, Comcast announced they were buying Time Warner Cable. Now AT&T buys Directv. What does this mean?

Time Warner Cable and Directv knew they were facing extinction. So they figured now was a good time to cash out.

AT&T and Comcast both have tons of products and services beyond selling TV.

Mark my words: AT&T and Comcast have Netflix and Amazon in their cross hairs. They now believe the future of TV is what Netflix and Amazon are doing and AT&T and Comcast believe they have the resources to do it better. Stay Tuned.

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Evidence Shows CTR Is Becoming Important In SEO May 18, 2014

Evidence Shows CTR Is Becoming Important In SEO

Hey SEO (search engine optimization) people! Guess what! Your cheese has been moved again!

Recently, I found another marketing blogger venting about how the dastardly Google has changed the way they rank who’s shows up first in Google maps. Her post is even titled, “This Is Why People Hate Google” lol.

Based on her case study and many others I’ve come across, the CTR (click through rate), which has been so paramount in PPC (pay per click), is now coming to SEO.

For those not familiar with click through rate, it’s the number of people who see your website link, divided by the amount of clicks. So for instance, if there’s 100 people looking at Website A and 25 people click on it, that’s a great CTR of 25%. But then if there’s 100 people looking at Website B and only 2 people click on it, the CTR is 2% and not as good.

In Google’s opinion (and mine included), CTR is a great way to determine how popular and relevant the content is to the Google user.

And it appears that Google is in the beginning process of eroding the value of links and replacing it with CTR.

This is exactly why I don’t do black hat SEO anymore. The cheese gets moved too much lol. Better to just focus on content, user experience and building the client’s brand and not have all your hard work knocked over by the wrecking ball known as the Google algorithm update.

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Would Remarketing Work For My Business? May 18, 2014

Would Remarketing Work For My Business?

Some marketers that are naive think that there’s a one size fits all solution for every business. But the reality is that depending on what business you’re in, what your businesses’ location is and what your goals are, will ultimately determine which internet marketing techniques are the most applicable to deploy.

Remarketing is currently one of the more trendy marketing techniques out there right now and it’s trendy for a reason. Because it’s working.

So what types of businesses benefit most from remarketing? Businesses that are in long sales cycles.

For instance, when we’re doing marketing for taxi companies, the taxi customers usually need somebody now.

But for other businesses that sell musical instruments, the customer will usually do a lot of research on which type of guitar they want. And what price range they should purchase in. And maybe even save up money to buy.

So if you have a store that sells musical instruments and you’re marketing on Google, there’s a pretty good chance that website visitor is not ready to buy through no fault of the business.

So with remarketing, the banner ads are served to these people of interest. Where they’re seeing your brand at least a couple times a day. And then the day will arrive when they are ready to buy and hopefully after getting familiar with the brand, the business might get first crack at getting the customer and making the sale.

Businesses that do remodeling. That sell used cars. Any business that sells a product or service that’s more of a want, than a need. Where there isn’t as much urgency for the customer. For these types of businesses, remarketing should be the most important and effective part of your internet marketing rolodex.

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