The biggest problem in internet marketing is that there aren’t enough people that know what they’re doing.

Wall Street Journal recently put out an article detailing how big companies like Reach Local and Yodle are good at acquiring small business clients, but then the actual campaign work is done by automated software. And then when the small business owner gets bad results they call and talk to someone in a call center that isn’t properly trained and doesn’t really know much about marketing on Google.

For all the demand out there (millions of small businesses) there’s just simply not enough supply (marketing people that know what they’re doing).

And im skeptical about campaigns being run by automated software because the biggest challenge in making marketing dollars on Google work is producing quality phone calls. In other words, getting the small business the types of customers they want.

For instance, let’s say you’re working with a limo service small business that wants to get customers wanting a limo ride to the airport.

A marketer that knows a little bit of what they’re doing will target “limo lax” as a keyword. The problem is that the default setting is broad match. And when the setting is under broad match, it means Google will advertise the client for not only the keyword you’re targeting but also for other keywords Google considers “similar and relevant”. So when you target “limo lax” with broad match, your going to get a lot of clicks where people actually type in “taxi lax” or “shuttle service lax”. All three keywords are similar in the searcher needing airport transportation, but a limo service business usually doesn’t have taxi cabs or shuttles.

A marketer that doesn’t know anything about what they’re doing will just target “limo” or “limo service” and boy do the results get bad from there lol. Then you’re getting clicks from people looking for just limo pictures or someone looking to see if there’s a school for limo drivers or someone searching “how to do a limo business”. All of these searches are junk to the limo service small business that wants customers that want to ride in a limo to the airport.

But even these super basic steps are unknown to most novices that work in bigger internet marketing companies. Thus the results are bad.

My best advice to small business owners to find an internet marketing company that knows what they’re doing (be it Customwave or anyone else) is ask lots of questions. And then see if the person you’re talking to gives you specific, detailed answers or vague, generalizations.

It’s easy to make promises to people. It’s also free and costs no money. Anyone can do it. But how many marketers can articulate their service, what they’re going to do and the value of doing it. That’s what you want to look for. If the marketer you’re talking to caan’t smoothly detail and walk you through what they’re going to do, youre marketing dollars are in trouble.

The two most effective techniques in search engine optimization right now in 2014 is brand building and content marketing. My post yesterday covered a lot of ground on why building your brand is important and how to do it. Today, I want to quickly touch on how to do content marketing.

So what makes content marketing most effective? It’s not about who can write the best.

At Google, the engineers over there philosophically look at each person doing a search as “someone having a question”. And then the websites that are on the 1st page are “possible answers to the searcher’s question”.

So how can a business do content marketing to produce better SEO results and increase sales specifically?

Blog. A lot. And focus on keywords your potential customers search for. And be specific. Everybody writes about “limo service in san diego”. But how many limo service companies have content on “limo service for comic con” or “limo del hotel”. Potential customers actually type these keywords in to Google!

So imagine if you’re a business person going to Comic Con in San Diego. And you want to take a limo to the convention. It’s important to you the driver knows where they’re going so you might type “limo comic con” into Google. And just imagine your relief when you find a website that has a blog post talking about how they specialize in providing limo service for Comic Con and know all the in’s and out’s. So not only is it likely you call that limo company. It’s also likely you become their customer.

Same thing if you’re staying at the Grand Del Mar Hotel and need a limo to the airport. You want a limo company close by that drive you to the airport. And you do a search for “limo grand del hotel” and then find a limo service with a blog talking about how you know exactly where the hotel is and the best and quickest route to take to San Diego Airport. Once again, pretty likely that person not only calls, but becomes your customer.

And if you’re Google, this is the content you want to rank on the 1st page because for people going to Comic Con or people needing transportation from the Del Hotel, your content will answer their question.

So not only do you get your website on the 1st page of Google, but you’re also increasing the conversion rate between phone calls to new customers.

This is effective content marketing in 2014.