Google Favors Brands In SEO. So Make Your Small Business A Brand With Banner Ads.

Google Favors Brands In SEO. So Make Your Small Business A Brand With Banner Ads.

What I’m about to write about covers a lot of ground, so I want to summarize everything here and then go into greater detail on each point in future blog posts.

-The consensus in the SEO community is that Google more and more is favoring brands when it comes to search engine optimization. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land fame even addresses this in the first question of a recent interview. Sullivan’s key point is that Google is not just favoring big brands over small brands. Google is favoring ANY brand over websites no one cares about (in other words, non-brands).

-So how does Google determine who is a brand and who isn’t? That type of thing could be subjective. But I believe the main determining factor is based off of how many people search for a particular brand by name. For instance, there’s probably way more people that do a Google search for “McDonald’s” than “Joe’s World Famous Burgers”.

-And the great thing with small business is that there’s lots of industries that don’t have a dominant super power in their market. Take the limo service industry for example. There’s no national, household name that the mainstream automatically turns to. Therefore, a limo company only has to compete with other small business limo companies. Therefore, success can be achieved when it comes to boosting a small business into becoming more of a brand than the next small business limo company that isn’t doing anything.

-So how does a small business boost brand awareness? Isn’t that expensive? In 2014, it is not.

-The answer is with website banner advertising.

-Nielsen, that does the local TV ratings, put out a report in February that said the average cost of reaching 300,000 people in a local market with TV advertising costs $7,500. Pretty expensive. But the cost of reaching 300,000 people in a local market with banner ads on websites cost only $100. Pretty incredible, right?

-The key thing to understand is that the value of banner ads is not to get clicks to your website to produce sales leads. The value is the same as TV advertising. It’s to become more well known and have “top-of-the-mind awareness”. The same reason Coke still advertises and Taco Bell still advertises. Everybody knows who they are. But they want to be fresh in your memory in case you get hungry or thirsty.

-Most people don’t click on banner ads. But people do notice them. And after 6 months, 1 year, 2 years of advertising, people in your local area will start to know who you are.

-And when the time comes for people who finally have a need for your product or service, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll think of your company because of all the reminders your banner ads have given them.

-When this happens, you’ll see a gradual increase in the number of people searching your company name on Google. Thus making your company name more of a brand and favorable in the search rankings.

-Why would Google favor brands in search engine optimization? I remember reading a story almost 10 years ago when BMW was using SEO tactics Google didn’t like. And Google warned them to stop, but BMW kept doing it. So Google decided to punish BMW and removed bmw.com from the search engine! And at the time, Google thought “Ha! That’ll show you BMW!” But the unexpected happened. It was Google that experienced the backlash. Because people typed “bmw” into Google and when BMW’s website didn’t pop up, people thought Google’s search engine wasn’t working.

-So the main reason Google has always favored brands and is now favoring them even more is that when people search for things, they want to see brands they’re familiar with.

-Imagine this. Let’s say you have more than 1 million people see your banner ad for your limo service business at least 5 times within the span of 1 year. People in your local area become familiar with who you are. And then they search for a limo company in their area and your company, one of the most well known limo companies in your city, doesn’t pop up on the 1st page. Guess what? That makes Google look bad, like it’s search engine isn’t working. The same way people got upset when they couldn’t find BMW’s website.

-It means that consumers have an expectation with Google’s search engine that the most well known companies should pop up first and then smaller brands or no name brands underneath.

-So to come full circle with my point, besides creating specific keyword related content, making your business a brand in your local area, is the most effective and most important search engine optimization tactic in 2014.

-And I don’t see Google changing their importance on brands anytime soon.

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Facebook Ads & Twitter Ads Don’t Produce Sales Leads? Duh.

Facebook Ads & Twitter Ads Don’t Produce Sales Leads? Duh.

Priceline.com CEO Darren Huston is quoted in Bloomberg in saying that spending money on Google ads has been great in increasing sales. But spending “an endless amount of money” on Facebook and Twitter, “there’s nothing there.”

In other words, Google ads lead to increased sales. Facebook and Twitter ads don’t. Why is that?

First off, Facebook and Twitter sell display ads. Banner ads. Google’s search engine is completely different.

When people go to a search engine like Google, they have a need. They are actively looking. When people see a banner ad and click on it, it might mean the clicker is curious, but doesn’t mean they have a need. And then you can’t forget all the accidental clicks banner ads pick up too.

But for some reason, businesses think that Facebook and Twitter is just like Google in getting clicks to increase sales and then they PAY AROUND THE SAME PRICE PER CLICK AS THEY DO WITH GOOGLE.

In the next 1-3 years as people start to realize what the Priceline CEO is finding out, Facebook clicks and Twitter clicks will drop to the same price as the average display ad. And then Facebook and Twitter might become a more viable advertising vehicle.

But banner ads are completely different than search. The bigger value of doing them is like TV advertising where you want to make your brand more well known in your market. If you think the banner ads will immediately boost sales like Google ads do, you’re going to be disappointed.

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Taco Bell Creates Best Ad Campaign I’ve Seen In Awhile

Taco Bell Creates Best Ad Campaign I’ve Seen In Awhile

People love drama. It’s one of the main things that attracts us to movies and TV. We love watching conflict. This Taco Bell advertisement does all this in their latest ad campaign.

When watching the commercial, I’m first thinking how clever Taco Bell was at finding people named Ronald McDonald. Then I wondered if it was even legal to do what they were doing, copyright speaking. Then I wondered if these people’s real names were actually Ronald McDonald. Then I saw McDonald’s response on Twitter and thought, wow, what a lazy response. There is for sure 3 big lessons to be learned here.

First off, what is Taco Bell’s purpose in this ad campaign? It’s to build awareness that they now have a breakfast menu. That’s it. They want people to know. With this ad campaign, they’ve done that. One of the best ways to attract attention is to create controversy and that’s what they’ve done targeting McDonald’s.

Second, McDonald’s had a chance to leach attention off of Taco Bell’s ad dollars. They had a chance to create awareness for something new they were doing. Maybe even to say their breakfast menu was better and that the Egg McMuffin is famous or something. But all McDonald’s could muster was, “Ronald still prefers McDonald’s.” What a wasted opportunity. It’s like they were either lazy or just flat out caught off guard.

But lastly, the big lesson here for small business is that the number one goal of advertising is to create awareness. But a close second, is that you want to leave a positive impression with your targeted audience. My main point is that lots of ad dollars and blanket advertising and big audience reach numbers are nice, but there is definitely a value in ad creative as we’ve seen with Taco Bell.

When creative ad messaging can be advertised in big numbers, there’s a chance to hit a real home run.

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Will Advertising Be Acceptable On Wearables Like Smart Watches?

Will Advertising Be Acceptable On Wearables Like Smart Watches?

With internet connected devices that we can wear like smart watches, us marketers are entering into new territory. The knee jerk reaction is you think “oh cool, another device people use to connect to the internet. Increases ad inventory. Expands reach. Possibly drives down cost. Cool deal.” But how accepting will people be of advertising on devices like smart watches?

When the iphone was first introduced, some people thought ads on consumer’s cell phones was a ridiculous idea and would never fly. Now, it’s a pretty normal thing. My prediction is that because there’s so much money involved, advertisers will figure out a subtle way to advertise that is palatable to the public.

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Study Says Majority Of People’s Attention On Smartphone, TV Just Background Noise

Study Says Majority Of People’s Attention On Smartphone, TV Just Background Noise

I can completely believe this study. For instance, it’s very common for my wife to be sitting on the couch watching YouTube on her phone, while the TV is on. But she’s not paying attention to the TV. Meanwhile, I’m in the home office and my attention primary on my computer. And from time to time I’ll glance at the TV. Then fast forward through the commercials. Just another piece of evidence confirming that the TV advertising business is on a slow decline. And the internet advertising business is growing.

 

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I Think People Underestimate How Many People Are On The Internet

I Think People Underestimate How Many People Are On The Internet

What I’m about to say is more theory on my part than actual fact. I think when people think of reaching an enormous amount of people, they think of TV.

I’m just here to share how many people have been on entertainment related websites in January 2014. Nielsen says that the number is 167 million people in the United States. YouTube alone got a little over 110 million people in that one month with each person averaging 12 visits throughout the month.

Overall, there were 198 million Americans online in January 2014. Average time each person spent online throughout the month? 29 hours and 43 minutes.

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Apps Take Up 90% Of Internet Time On Smartphones, Browsers Take Up 10% On Smartphones

Apps Take Up 90% Of Internet Time On Smartphones, Browsers Take Up 10% On Smartphones

To me, this report from Nielsen shows that people might know what the internet is. They might know that their cell phones now connect to the internet. They definitely know what Google is. They’ve figured out how to download apps on their cell phone. But this report shows people still aren’t comfortable navigating the internet in the regular mobile browsers. Like using the url aka, address bar.

So what does this mean for marketers and small businesses? With the majority of internet use shifting from regular computers to mobile devices and 90% of these people using apps to navigate the internet on their mobile device, every small business should have their own mobile app. The last thing you should want is for someone wanting to find your phone # or other info on your website, but that user decides not to look it up because you don’t have an app where they can easily access the content.

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YouTube Is Developing A New Version For Kids Under 10

YouTube Is Developing A New Version For Kids Under 10

One of the dilemmas parents face letting their kids use YouTube is that they can easily access content that’s not suited for them. YouTube has now come up with the brilliant (no sarcasm) idea to make a separate version of their website for kids 10 years and under. And they would also be encouraging content creators for content that fits the age group. Makes total sense because a lot of parents I know won’t let their kids go on YouTube. Now that could change. We all know that the kids movies make boku bucks at movie theaters. So kids content on YouTube could do just as well. For marketing, it presents a great opportunity to reach this age group on a massive scale.

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Google Finally Unveils “Smart Watches” That Connect To Internet

Google Finally Unveils “Smart Watches” That Connect To Internet

They’re finally here!! Google finally has unveiled it’s much anticipated “smart watch”. Watches that little display screens that act like mini computers. Even smaller than cell phones! We’ve already seen how much smart phones have taken off. So it’d be a wise assumption that the US consumers will adopt the watches in the same way. So for us marketers, making sure our websites are “smart watch” compatible and show up properly on watches will become a new part of the job description. To me, the more devices there are out there that connect to the internet, the more website traffic and online marketing opportunities there will be : )

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Is Native Advertising Worth The Premium Cost?

Is Native Advertising Worth The Premium Cost?

For those that have heard of “native advertising”, I’m not convinced of its effectiveness. And I’m not the only one. An ad is an ad is an ad is an ad. And just because you trick someone into reading your ad cause they think its a part of the content on the website they’re reading, doesnt mean that the ad is more valuable than a typical banner ad. I’m not saying native advertising doesn’t work at all. I’m just saying its not worth the premium price publishers are charging for it right now.

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