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.