By 2018, Internet Advertising Revenue Will Surpass TV Advertising Revenue September 4, 2014

By 2018, Internet Advertising Revenue Will Surpass TV Advertising Revenue

If I can point to one thing to show off how important website advertising is and will become, it’s this eMarketer study forecasting that by 2018 digital or internet advertising revenue will surpass TV advertising revenue.

So what can we learn from this?

The goal of the vast majority of TV advertisers is branding and to build awareness. Internet website advertising can achieve the exact same thing, but the cost is tons lower and people are realizing how much of a bigger bang for a buck they get advertising on websites versus TV.

Why is this the case?

The simplistic answer is that website advertising has tons more inventory than TV. By inventory, I mean places to advertise on.

I know there’s tons of TV channels out there. 1,000. Maybe 2,000 tops for the average household that has cable or dish TV.

But think of how many websites there are on the internet. Yeah, a lot more.

And with so, so, so much supply and only a bit of demand, it equals very low cost.

Small business owners especially have a giant opportunity to brand their companies and build awareness in the local like never before. I highly recommend people take advantage of it.

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57% Of Households Have No Landline Phone Or Don’t Use It September 4, 2014

57% Of Households Have No Landline Phone Or Don’t Use It

NHIS put out data showing something that would have been crazy 20 years ago, saying that 57% of U.S. households either don’t have a landline telephone or if they do, they don’t use it.

Just crazy how times have changed.

Obviously, this shows how essential the mobile cell phone has become.

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How A Website Shows Up On Mobile Is More Important Than How It Shows Up On Computers September 4, 2014

How A Website Shows Up On Mobile Is More Important Than How It Shows Up On Computers

Research firm Gartner has done a study showing that by 2015, there will be 4 Android mobile devices for every Windows or Mac computer.

What this means for business owners is that how your website pops up on a cell phone, tablet or other mobile device will become 4 times as important as how it shows up on the computer.

Ever since I started in this business in 2003, when Customwave would build a website, the client and us would pull the website up on our computers to judge how it was coming along.

Now, the litmus test comes on how the website shows up on our cell phones. This should be the priority for every business owner.

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For My Fellow Marketers: What To Spend Your Reading Time On July 17, 2014

For My Fellow Marketers: What To Spend Your Reading Time On

For marketers trying to learn internet marketing, there’s a lot of junk out there. By junk, I mean worthless internet marketing content.

There’s a lot of theories out there that don’t hold up in reality.

There’s a lot of dated and obsolete techniques that don’t work anymore in 2014.

There’s a lot of worthless information that doesn’t bring any value to the table.

It seems like a lot of writers write their articles and their article has no point, it’s just they have a job to do and have to write something. Because there’s not big news every single weekday.

So as a marketer that’s trying to learn about internet marketing, one of the big keys to growing is knowing which articles have actual fruit in them and won’t waste your time.

How can you discern which articles have fruit and which ones don’t?

For me, I don’t read content that claims to have a one size fits all solution. I stay away from content that guarantees something. I stay away from content that claims something is easy. I stay away from content where people are trying to lure you in to sell you a whitepaper. Because the purpose of their content is to sell you something.

I tend to read articles talking about new marketing techniques or how a specific marketing technique can be effective.

And if you’re a beginner, reading lots and lots and lots of “how to” articles can be good in getting a consensus on what most people do and what most don’t.

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Do Potential Customers Actually Trust Online Reviews? July 17, 2014

Do Potential Customers Actually Trust Online Reviews?

It’s cloudy at best.

Brightlocal recently put out a study trumpeting that “88% Of Consumers Trust Online Reviews As Much As Personal Recommendations”.

However, when you look at the actual poll, it’s not as clean cut. It’s not like 88% said, yes I trust online reviews.

In the BrightLocal poll, 32% said they trusted online review if there were multiple positive reviews for the same business. So what happens if a business has only 1 or 2 positive reviews?

Then 30% said they trusted online reviews if they “believed the reviews were authentic”. Ok, soooo, that’s pretty subjective. Unfortunately, there’s no follow up question to these same people asking by percentage, how many online reviews in general are authentic.

Then 26% of people say they believe online reviews for some businesses, but no for others. Lol, that’s hardly a vote of confidence for online reviews.

Then 13% said outright, they do not believe online reviews.

So obviously, there’s lots of fine print caveats to this poll.

My take is that online reviews are not here for the long haul. In a few years, word will get around more and more to the mainstream how many positive reviews and negative reviews are fake and how easy it is to game the system.

I’m under the belief that online reviews will be replaced by “local gurus”. In other words, bloggers that write about various local businesses. They’re already starting to pop up. And I’ve seen studies showing consumers trust individual local experts more than review sites. I think this is the direction we’re heading in.

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Gallup: 62% Of People Polled Say Social Media Has No Influence In Purchasing Decisions July 17, 2014

Gallup: 62% Of People Polled Say Social Media Has No Influence In Purchasing Decisions

Gallup recently did a poll asking consumers how much influence social media has on their purchasing decisions. 5% said social media has great influence. 30% said some influence. But a whopping 62% said social media has no influence at all on purchasing decisions.

This is further evidence that social media marketing does not produce the results businesses think it will or hope it will.

Based on this poll, it shows that in actuality, there’s not much value in someone “liking” your business’ Facebook page.

My professional opinion is maintained that the value in social media is when a business owner himself networks with people, builds relationships, to get business.

The other value is brand advertising, but because people are confused in thinking the Facebook clicks are the same as Google clicks, the display advertising costs are overpriced and don’t have as much value.

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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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