Hiring a web developer is the equivalent of hiring a contractor to build a home. Would you hire a contractor before knowing what type of home you want, what’s your budget, what will the building look like, who will live in it, what will be used for? Before hiring a web developer you need to be acutely aware of what your needs are. And just like in the “contractor world”, not all contractors are alike. Sometimes a contractor can also do some of the design work, blueprint work, and
Looking for additional leads and sales online? Are you a professional service business like a lawyer or a dentist? Perhaps you are in retail services of some sort like a salon, massage, or waxing. Question and answer sites like Yahoo answers (YA) could be a very effective lead generation source, and certainly drive more qualified traffic to your website. The goal of this post is to show you what's possible with an actual client of ours that has been using YA for four years, and to show you
This week’s ad review is about ads that are trying too hard to sell you on something….anything…. So, the question is, are 2 offers on an ad better than 1? Or are 5 even better? Here is an example. This is the ad of Carmel Plaza Dental in Carmel Mountain. Looking at this ad we can see that the advertiser, a dental office, is trying to tell you pretty much all they do on a half a page ad. If you look at this ad, there are many areas that “scream” at you: - The $35 offer,
Small business owners often wonder if coupons work and many times business owners get frustrated when they feel they have to offer coupons in order for a person to try their product or service. “Why?” They ask. “Why do I have to discount my products, it’s already tough enough”, they often complain. This happened to me today. I saw a coupon for $30 OFF a music lesson, first time clients. As my son had been asking for guitar lessons for some time, incentivized by the coupon, I
The short answers is: Yes, advertising is worth it! BUT... For most small and medium sized businesses (SMB), advertising is a knee jerk reaction, not something well planned out, and much of it is wasteful and ineffective for a number of different reasons. First let me say that I define a successful ad campaign as one that generates more cash for a business than it consumes. If you run an ad in the paper that costs $500 but only 1 new person called you and they only spent $200 on your products
So, I was browsing on Facebook a few days ago, checking out my friends status, birthdays, etc, when an ad called my attention. It was a book about children’s education, The Missing Alphabet: A Parents' Guide to Developing Creative Thinking in Kids. I also saw it was an ad by Amazon.com. I clicked on the ad, which landed me on the Amazon page featuring the book. I looked at the table of contents, read a few pages, and before I knew it, I had clicked on the Purchase button. No, I did not get
For SEO strategies that continually struggle to meet lead generation goals of its organization, or that rely heavily on traditional media for new prospects and brand awareness, the website strategy may be the issue that needs further examination. Some clear symptoms of a poor strategy include reliance on traditional media spend, poor overall ROI on marketing spend, high acquisition cost per customer, consistently see smaller competitors rank higher in search results in Google, Yahoo, or Bing,
If all your customers pay for your company's products and services the very first time they meet you, and they come back throughout the year and spend lots more money, and you don't need any repeat business, then don't read anymore. However, if like most companies, your customers require multiple interactions and a warm fuzzy before buying then read on. We're going to talk about remarketing, also known as retargeting through Google and Facebook. We've talked about this before on our blog
The two most basic principles of online marketing are driving traffic to your site and converting that traffic to a paying customer. On average, people spend ten times the amount of money driving traffic to their website as they do on improving the conversion of that traffic. If you're sending traffic to your site through PPC on Google or Facebook, or through SEO, spend some of the SEM budget evaluating your landing pages to see where you can improve conversion. Let's get started on our
Like many business owners that have embarked on a Google pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, you've had some success but want to improve your campaign and grow qualified online leads. As a small or medium business, Google PPC could be the single best marketing tactic in your tool chest, so let's improve it! Pull up your chair and let's discuss one small tweak that could increase your qualified leads and lower your PPC costs at the same time. One variable that impacts your ads rank within Google