Most of the businesses I talk to increasingly have shifted their media spend towards paid search. And given its growth, who could blame them?
But, between the growing importance of alternative information channels and the possibility of serious antitrust oversight, next year will challenge Google with the largest threats in its history.
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Marketing on the Internet seems to get harder all the time, doesn’t it? Content marketing, paid search, natural search/SEO, display advertising, remarketing, and on and on and on. How can anyone expect to keep up?
Well, happily, here’s a secret: They’re all much more related than you might think. You build content to meet your customer’s needs. That’s a landing page. Make sure it’s got some appropriate keywords in it, get some folks to link to it, and you’re doing SEO (admittedly, a simplified version, but it’s better than nothing). The better its relevance, the less you pay for clicks if you point paid search or display ads to it. And so on.
Happily, loads of resources exist to help you tie your activities together. Here are just a handful of excellent posts to help you start:
Google’s Agency Blog has a great look at using Audience insights to improve your ad campaigns. While Google’s presentation focuses on paid search and display media advertising, the tools offered can help you develop better content and understand your customers’ behaviors more readily, too. (I’ve added the full video below if you’ve got the time to watch it.)
What, you don’t do and paid search or display advertising? You might want to consider it. The Certified Knowledge blog shows how to use PPC to test SEO. Sweet. (And sorry about their “enroll” popup when you land there. The content’s still worth reading.)
Social Media Explorer follows up this theme of “content meets search meets SEO” with this post that, well, explores the future of content in SEO. Very much worth the read.
Now, in case you wonder why all of this is a good idea, check out Drew McLellan’s report on mixing media types. It seems customers exposed to the same message in multiple media channels (surprise, surprise) showed better recall than those seeing the message in only one. Offering the same message, in multiple channels, targeted to the right customer, goes a long way to achieving your best results.
Have a great weekend, folks. And remember, we’re here at Thinks every day helping you untangle the Web to improve your marketing and e-commerce activities. Why not subscribe via email and get these updates delivered to you?
Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the local, mobile, social web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today.
Not a lot of setup this week, folks. Just a set of the best social, search, and strategy insights out there:
The big news this week is a Pew report that shows 65% of all adults use social networking sites. But what’s really interesting is that no demographic category is below 50% and, for the first time, more than 40% surveyed claimed to have used a social networking site “yesterday”. I’ve said it before. Social is here, it’s real, and the key now is how to make the most of your social marketing efforts.
For many companies, PR, SEO and social marketing live is separate silos. But, if you note recent research that shows LinkedIn is the top social media site for journalists, you might realize a greater connection exists and look for ways to exploit it. Check it out.
Old friend Jeremiah Owyang offers an interesting insight into the number of employees using “official” social media channels. No huge surprise, but, as you might imagine, the bigger the company, the more folks using official channels. The key point, of course, is that social is moving into “mainstream” parts of many organizations at an increasing rate.
And, finally, we’ll close with another set of stats. Some people question the business value of Twitter. But as Social Media Today notes, there’s a market there. The key is figuring out how to make it work for your business. Of course, if you’re interested, you can drop me a line and see how I can help you sort that out.
Have a great weekend, everyone. I hope you don’t get hit too hard by Hurricane Irene (we’re watching her pretty closely here at Thinks Central, believe me). See you back here next week.
Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of thelocal, mobile, social web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today.
