Advertising Agencies in Washington

• Their ads stood out because they (and authorized companies) were the only advertisers who could use the brand name in their AdWords ads
• Click-through rates stayed generally low due to limited competition

• Ads that use the term in a descriptive or generic way (e.g., Apple, if you sell the fruit)
• Ads that use the trademark in a nominative manner to refer to the trademark or its owner, specifically—
  • Resale of trademarked goods or services: The advertiser's site must sell (or clearly facilitate the sale of) the goods or services corresponding to the trademarked term. The ad’s landing page must clearly demonstrate that a user can purchase the trademarked goods or services from the advertiser.
  • Sale of components, replacement parts or compatible products corresponding to a trademark: The advertiser’s site must sell (or clearly facilitate the sale of) the components, replacement parts or compatible products relating to the goods or services of the trademark. The advertiser’s landing page must clearly demonstrate that a user is able to purchase the components, parts or compatible products from the advertiser.
  • Informational sites: Third-party providers of non-competitive and informative details about the goods or services corresponding to the trademarked term can use the term in ads. Such an advertiser may not sell or facilitate the sale of goods or services of a trademark owner’s competitor.

• Trademark owners maintain a top ad position because of their superior Quality Score
• Searchers get relevant ads from more vendors
• Resellers, service providers and sellers of compatible/complementary/replacement parts can present more specific, compelling ads and better compete for ad positions
• Informational sites can market focused knowledge and recommendations

• Have you noticed any increased click-through rates (CTRs) for your ads?
• Has your conversion rate changed?
• Are you spending more money on your PPC ads because you have to bid higher (i.e., there's more competition) for the same terms you used before?
• Is your ROI increasing or decreasing for your AdWords campaigns?

• Listen
• Learn the culture
• Establish a presence
• Spend time cultivating conversations and relationships
• Build a reputation of helpfulness
• Share relevant, meaningful content when appropriate to deepen understanding of your company, build trust in your brand and help more people find you through search

• hot water heater
• gas water heater
• electric water heater
• tankless water heater

• Build brand. Whether or not customers and prospects actually click on your Internet ads, your brand benefits from appearing where your customers are. And if your Internet ads coordinate with the ads your audience sees elsewhere, all the better: You send a consistent and reinforcing message about your brand that builds trust in your company. If you haven’t yet tried any Internet advertising, what do you have to lose? For greatest impact, be sure to supplement your efforts through other channels.

• Trigger information gathering. With more and more customers using the Web to gather information before making a purchase, your company can couple Internet advertising with other campaigns to make information-gathering that much easier. Providing specific landing pages that present the information decision-makers need most before they make a purchase and promoting those landing pages across all your campaigns is a valued service to customers—and can make the difference between whether a customer chooses you or a competitor.

• Drive online transactions. If your goal is to increase online transactions, integrating Internet ads with other media campaigns so that all lead to the same specialized landing page and transaction process takes away confusion for the customer. There’s nothing worse than going to a company Web site and not being able to find what an ad promises. And running stand-alone ads that send different messages most likely means customers will pass you by.

• Promote community. Internet advertising is a great way to promote community—a forum, Twitter stream, Facebook fan page, LinkedIn group, specialized social network—around your company and brand. Running integrated campaigns wherever your customers frequent—online or offline—that invite and encourage them to participate is a great way to build up community.

• 54% of Americans use Internet and local search instead of phone books
• 90% of online commercial searches result in offline transactions
• 61% of local searches result in a transaction

1. You don’t have to have a Facebook profile or page to participate in Facebook Ads, so testing whether it’s a viable marketing channel for your business is quick and economical.
2. You have access to 250,000,000 active Facebook users.
3. You can target your audience very specifically to reach particular groups or niche markets.
4. You can include an image or logo with your ad for free, so each impression builds brand whether or not it’s clicked.
5. You can drive organic traffic virally through use of the friend interactions (aka social actions) option.
6. You have two pricing options to help you get the best return on your advertising investment over time.

1. What do you most enjoy about being a graphic designer?

I enjoy the constant changes that occur during any given week. I might work on a logo, a brochure, a tradeshow booth and a website. It keeps your "design mind" fresh and it challenges you to come up with new ideas.

2. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got started in graphic design?

I have always liked ads and advertising. One of my earliest memories is of getting a scrapbook for Christmas when I was five. I drew a few pictures but it is mostly filled with ads from magazines. I picked out anything that was interesting or really eye-catching. The Speedy Alka-Seltzer ads were a big favorite of mine.  I always knew I wanted to be an artist of some kind. When it came time to go to college, I picked the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. Partly because of the weather (I grew up in Indiana) and partly because they have extensive training in Advertising, Typography, Design and Photography.

3. What is the most challenging part of your work and can you share a project that you are working on right now?  

The most challenging part of any design is interpreting what the client wants and needs. We worked with an established hair salon in Virginia who was moving to a new location. Their signage on the overhang of the shopping center had to match the others in the center, so it didn't really match the design aesthetics we had created for them. When they moved in, a lot of their clients didn't know they were open because the windows were tinted and it didn't look like the space was occupied. We created a look that matched their aesthetic and created collateral materials to support that aesthetic. The window design incorporated their logo, the website and phone number and we used part of the brick wall to showcase photos of the inside of the salon to show how beautifully renovated it was on the inside. Now the eye-catching graphics make people stop and take note of what they had to offer.
 

4. How do you stay creative when you are working under pressure?

This business is all about deadlines. Sometimes those deadlines can create stress but sometimes they can spark a great idea. It is hard, but you have to stay focused on the end product. I work on a sportswear catalog project that is several months long and has many different aspects and variables. You have to make a schedule and delegate different tasks associated with the project, all the while keeping your vision for what the end product will be.

1. The historical click-through rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google. This makes sense: If a particular ad has performed well (i.e., people clicked it) in the past for a particular keyword, it stands to reason that it might work effectively this time. But what if you’re just starting out (i.e., your ads have no CTR history) or you have a unique keyword (like a new product name)? In the first case, Google may consider how the keyword has performed for other advertisers and use that in your Quality Score. In the second case, Google may simply assign a low Quality Score, which means a high minimum bid rate for that term. Rather than introduce a whole set of keywords related to the new product name (which could be costly), you might want to pause campaign activity for all but the most promising new keywords to establish a healthy track record first, then introduce other keywords over a period of time.
2. Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account. Yes, the performance of your entire account over time comes into play. So if you’re new, be aggressive in getting some good performance under your belt early on.
3. The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group. A display URL is the Web address that searchers see in your ad (on the bottom line of the ad text) and provides a general idea of where they’ll be going if they click. Google considers how well that address has performed in the past.
4. The quality of your landing page. From a searcher’s perspective, an ad that displays the keyword prominently plus a landing page that is specific to the search term, provides relevant information and is easy to navigate all adds up to a satisfying experience. Google rewards advertisers for creating that soup-to-nuts good experience.
5. The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group. Google rewards advertisers for good campaign organization. That means creating tightly structured ad groups with very focused, related keywords and ads that use those keywords.
6. The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query. Keyword selection is important, so make sure your ad groups contain keywords that people actually search on. The AdWords Keyword Tool and other search engine optimization (SEO) tools (e.g., Wordtracker) can help you identify the terms that are your best bet. Then, make sure you use those terms in the text of your ads so that you have the best chance of improving your Quality Score. Also, it’s a good idea to use the “Exact Match” option vs. “Broad Match” (which is the default) to specify how AdWords will determine a match between a search term and your keyword. With “Exact Match” your keyword has to exactly match the search term as it was typed in before your ad will be displayed. So you usually get fewer “eyes” in this case, but with a good ad that uses that specific term, your relevance will likely be higher.
7. Your account's performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown. If you target your ads for a particular geographic region, Google also takes into account how well you’ve performed there.
8. Other relevance factors. This set of unrevealed factors serves as a means to prevent short-cutting advertisers from gaming the system. Google frequently changes or refines its algorithm in search of (no pun intended) better user search experience.

1. AdWords calculates a Quality Score for each keyword based on two kinds of relevance.
2. A Quality Score is dynamic, which means its value adjusts and updates frequently (in fact, every time your keyword matches a search query and has the potential to trigger an ad) in response to a variety of factors in your ad campaign that relate to the general concept of performance.

• Google calculates Quality Scores differently for ads that will appear on Google search, its search network and its content network. (In this post, we focus on Google search.)
• Google makes a few adjustments when it calculates the Quality Score for top-positioned ads vs. side ads. For example, ad position top #1 gets the most clicks of any ad on a search results page, but some of those clicks are strictly “impulse” clicks; Google compensates for that factor.
• Other PPC advertising programs you might be familiar with also use a Quality Score–type metric: Yahoo! Search Marketing calculates a Quality Index; Microsoft adCenter uses Quality Based Ranking.

• Respond one to one
• Answer questions
• Address concerns
• Correct misconceptions
• Offer insights
• Point to other good sources of information

Search engine marketing (SEM) can be a remarkably effective channel for connecting with potential customers. But as is the case with other marketing channels you use, SEM’s effectiveness will depend on how your prospective customers use the channel—search in this case—to research and purchase the types of products and services your business offers. The more you know about how your B2B customers use search, the more successful SEM will be for your business.

Online’s Role in B2B Buying
Two years ago, B2B search-marketing company Enquiro Search Solutions conducted a survey of 1,086 B2B buyers to pinpoint exactly how buyers use online resources at various stages (awareness, research, negotiation, purchase) of the buying cycle. A full 85% of respondents reported that they go online at some time during the buying cycle, with 83% saying that they go online to find a vendor. Furthermore, across purchase categories (supplies, software, hardware, business services, equipment, parts and components), 1 in 2 respondents reported that in addition to researching vendors, products and services, they also purchase online.

Search’s Role in B2B Buying
For B2B buyers, search plays an important role in all stages of the buying cycle. Two out of three buyers report that search is where they start their online activity:

• 51% claim they start from a general search engine such as Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft Live Search
• 12% say they start from a vertical search engine, such as KnowledgeStorm, Business.com or ThomasNet
• 36% start at a particular vendor or distributor site, and those who do so say they frequently use search on the vendor site to find what they’re looking for

Not surprisingly, of the general search sites, Google dominates, with 77% of respondents saying they start there, followed by Yahoo! (14%), Microsoft Live Search (7%), and other search engines (2%).

The primary task that B2B customers turn to search for is information gathering: More than 70% use search to learn about a product/service (e.g., pricing, availability, requirements, features, specifications), compare products/services or read reviews about a product/service.

SEM’s Role in B2B Buying
The likelihood that your B2B customers will find you through search is directly dependent on whether—and how well—you optimize your Web content for search (SEO) and you participate in PPC advertising programs. Both determine your company’s chance of appearing on the coveted first page of the search results.

But if potential customers do find you there, what is your best chance—PPC ad or organic search listing—to get a click through? Enquiro’s study reports that overall, paid ads get about 25% of the clicks on a search engine results page (SERP); organic results draw the other 75%.

 Drilling down even further within a SERP, Enquiro looked at specific positions. The graph that follows shows how various organic and paid positions rank for clicks on a SERP. Of the clicks that go to PPC ads, about half go to PPC ads that appear at the top of the SERP and a quarter go to the ads that appear to the right. For PPC ads that appear at the bottom of the organic results (as on Yahoo! or Microsoft Live Search), searchers click a mere 0.2% of the time.

What to Make of It All
When it comes to SEO and PPC advertising (or, more likely, some combination thereof), it all comes down to what your customers will use most and how able you are to deliver the goods. Where do your best leads come from now? How do your customers use search? How well is your site currently optimized for search? How soon do you want to see results? How much money can you really afford to spend?

Most clicks will come through ranking highly in the organic results, but a high rank takes time to grow through well-executed, consistent SEO practices and valuable link-building. PPC advertising is a much faster way to make a page-1 appearance—you can be advertising within a few minutes after signing up for an account—but bidding for specific positions might be very costly. Whether you decide to experiment with SEO, PPC or both, or you decide to consult with an expert, remember that your SEM strategy will only be effective if it meets the needs of your customers. So, how do your B2B customers use search?
 

Starting a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising program can be intimidating, especially if the concept is new to you. But with a little foresight, discipline and persistence, you can build a network of sustainable campaigns that will serve as a solid foundation for your PPC strategy.

How PPC Advertising Works
Regardless of whether you use Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing or Microsoft AdCenter to drive your PPC ad program, the basic principles are essentially the same:

1. A potential customer types a search term (aka a keyword or keyword phrase) into a search engine.
2. The search engine holds an auction for that term among you and all the other advertisers who have bid on that term to determine ad placement on the search results pages. (Your ad position is based on what you’ve bid for the term plus the quality of your keyword-ad-landing page unit compared with that of other bidders; a new auction is held each time someone searches on the term.)
3. If your ad resonates with the searcher, he clicks through to a landing page on your Web site. If your landing page (and other supporting pages) provides what he needs, he might convert to a lead or customer.

Now, how do you get started? Here’s what it takes in Google AdWords.

Start with a Well-Planned Structure
Within an AdWords account, you can create up to 25 campaigns, each of which can contain as many as 100 ad groups, which in turn can contain up to 2000 keywords and 25 ads.

“Whoa!” you might say, “That sounds pretty complicated.”

Fortunately, just because you have that many options to work with doesn’t mean you need to use them all. You can start small with just one or two campaigns and a few ad groups. What’s most important is to plan your initial strategy well enough so that you can manage your program easily and adapt and grow it as you determine what works most effectively for your business.

AdWords offers the following hierarchical structure of “campaigns” and “ad groups” around which you organize your ad strategy:
 

When you create an account, you provide an email address and password for accessing the account and billing information for your ad-spend. You next set up your individual campaigns, establishing global properties such as the daily maximum spend, geographic targeting, and an end date for each campaign. At the ad group level, you create ads, choose keywords to trigger those ads and set your bid levels.

Let’s look at a simple example of how to use this structure to organize a PPC ad program around a set of services that a company might offer.

Think About Your Business
Suppose you own a marketing company that offers both traditional and Internet marketing services, and you want to promote specific services in each area through PPC advertising. In particular, you want to tackle your traditional marketing services first: advertising, logo design, brochures and similar services. Here’s one way you might plan your AdWords strategy:

I. Campaign1: Traditional Marketing Services

    A. AdGroup1: Advertising
        i. Keyword variations: advertising agency, advertising agencies, print advertising agency, print advertising agencies, advertising agency in washington dc, advertising agencies in washington dc, …
       ii. Ad:
           Advertising That Works!
           Advertising Agency—DC, VA & MD
           View our work—then call for a bid!
           www.yourcompany.com/adsamples

        B. AdGroup2: Logo design
        i. Keyword variations: logo design, logo designs, modern logo design, modern logo designs, corporate logo design, corporate logo designs, logo design washington dc, logo designs washington dc, …
       ii. Ad1:
           Fabulous New Logo Designs
           5 design concepts—fast delivery.
           Call for a Free Consultation!
           www.yourcompany.com/logodesign
      iii. Ad2:
           Logo Design Washington DC
           5 design concepts—fast delivery.
           Call for a Free Consultation!
           www.yourcompany.com/logodesign

        C. AdGroup3: Brochures

       [ ... ]

II. Campaign2: Internet Marketing Services

    A. AdGroup1: Web site design
        i. Keyword variations relating to Web site design
       ii. Ad(s) relating specifically to Web site design

       [ ... ]

 About Your Plan
Within your ad groups, be sure to group similar keyword terms together, write tightly aligned ads for those terms and keep your lists compact. You’ll find it much more effective to manage, say, 10 lists of 20 highly related terms with very targeted ads than 2 broader lists of 100 terms and more general ads.

Two- or three-word keyword phrases tend to draw in a good quantity of targeted traffic; more specific terms draw in lower numbers but higher-converting traffic. (Searchers tend to use more specific terms when they’re further along in the buying cycle.) Be sure to use a tool such as the AdWords Keyword Tool to research highly relevant keyword phrases and identify those with good traffic volume and low competition to place in your ad groups.

For each keyword term in an ad group, one of the associated ads will be displayed. So in our example, for every keyword in the Advertising group (AdGroup1), AdWords will display the same ad. But how does AdWords decide which ad to display if an ad group has multiple ads? Let’s say you do well enough in an auction for the term logo design washington dc (a keyword in AdGroup2) that AdWords places your ad at the top of the right-hand column on the search results page. Which ad will appear?

Google’s goal is always to have the best ads display when a searcher searches on a particular term, so by default, AdWords is set to “optimize,” which means it will display your best-performing ad based on its historical data. But you can also set up AdWords to rotate through your ads for a particular term. You’ll find this option useful when you want to test different ads to see which is more effective for a particular ad group.

Just the Tip of the Iceberg
Understanding how AdWords and other PPC programs work and planning how you’ll organize your PPC strategy are two big first steps to getting your PPC campaigns off the ground. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The more you learn about PPC advertising, the more confident you’ll feel when you take the plunge—and you’ll be better prepared to use the tool to your best advantage. Google provides some great information and tutorials on its Adwords Web site, and be sure to watch for future posts about PPC in this blog.

Whatever your opinion of the Super Bowl might be, one thing you can’t deny: The event succeeds in attracting and engaging a wide range of viewers (aka customers)—regardless of the teams that are playing or the location of the event itself.

And despite the quality of the game or whether the viewers are fans of the respective teams, those viewers are engaged and entertained; they discuss the game with their friends before, during and after the event; and they often convert from spectators to purchasers—of team products, food and beverage items, advertised technologies and services and so forth.

So, what lessons does the Super Bowl hold for corporate bloggers?

Super Lessons for Corporate Bloggers
A corporate blog is an excellent way for a business to attract and engage existing and potential customers on a more personal basis than through broadcast media (e.g., traditional advertising). But a corporate blog is only successful if it creates dialogue among its readers and a community around the company’s brand, products and services. Let’s look at a few Super Bowl lessons that can help you build community around your blog—and subsequently your company.

1. Identify your target audience.
According to the San Jose Mecury News, roughly 167 million U.S. viewers will watch Super Bowl XLIII on February 1, 2009. In a study conducted by BIGresearch for the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association, about 27% will tune in specifically for the commercials, 7% for the halftime show and 20% to get together with friends; only 46% will tune in to actually watch the game.

What’s the lesson here? What you write about in your blog depends on who you want to attract and engage—and their reasons for following your blog might vary greatly. Decide who you want to target with each post, and do your best to meet their expectations and needs.

2. Choose topics that will resonate with your target audience.
We all know how popular the commercials are for any given Super Bowl. What—exactly—is that popular with your target audience? For example, is your target audience primarily looking for content that …

... Interests or entertains them?

• Trivia
•  Historical information
• Statistical facts
• Anecdotes/stories
• Expert perspectives
• Industry predictions
• Creative/fun (like the commercials)

3. Present your content in an engaging manner.
So maybe your budget can’t spring for anything as cool as a Super Bowl commercial, but incorporating meaningful text, links, pictures, a presentation via SlideShare, a podcast or a short YouTube video might make all the difference in terms of the success of your blog.

4. Optimize your content for search.
Super Bowl coverage—and commercials—make use of timely and popular language, images and themes. What resonates with your customer base? Use a tool such as the Google Keyword Tool, WordTracker or Keyword Discovery to determine high-response, low-competition keyword phrases that you can optimize your blog posts around that will help you rank on the first couple of pages of the primary search engines.

5. Cultivate inbound links.
Another phase of any keyword optimization program is securing inbound links to your post. Google’s PageRank measurement (higher is better) takes into account the number of high-quality sites that link back to your post. There are several ways to get the word out about your blog posts to cultivate inbound links:

• Comment on other blogs and link back to your blog
• Make an announcement (140 characters or less) on Twitter and other micro-blogging platforms
• Comment on social networks (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook)
• Bookmark your posts on sites such as Delicious or StumbleUpon
• Email an invitation (“You don’t want to miss this post”) to your newsletter subscribers
• Issue an online press release (e.g., via PRWeb) and use other traditional promotional channels for noteworthy posts

6. Follow up with “post-event” comments and posts.
Regardless of the outcome of the Super Bowl, discussion always ensues, along with analysis over numerous days and highlights the rest of the year. The same thing happens with a good blog post. Be sure to follow the comments to your blog posts and follow up with another post—or two—to extend the discussion.

7. Revisit hot topics on a periodic basis.
The Super Bowl is an annual event that evokes anticipation the rest of the year. So can a particular topic of your blog that touches a nerve with your target audience. Measure the effectiveness of your posts (e.g., with Google Analytics), and keep track of those posts that resonate most highly with your target audience. You might revisit these topics annually (e.g., with a research study) or quarterly or monthly—whatever timeframe makes the most sense for your business or industry.

So, next Sunday, enjoy Super Bowl XLIII. And while you’re watching the event, be on the lookout for ideas that you can use to help your corporate blog elicit the same type of appeal to your target audience.
 

So, you’ve decided to give pay-per-click (PPC) advertising a try. Now what? Just sign up for Google AdWords, pick a few terms that you use to describe your products and services, enter your bids and ad text and wait for the leads and sales to roll in. That’s pretty simple!

Although that’s one way to approach PPC advertising, chances are you won’t meet your desired outcome—and you might spend a lot of money in the process for very few results. What’s a more sensible, effective way to approach PPC advertising? Read on …

Step 1: Seek Out Search-Effective Keywords
You might think that you know the terms that people use to find products and services like the ones you offer. But, do you really know for a fact which terms and variations bring in high traffic and which ones people don’t use at all?

For example, it seems obvious that a business in the greater Washington, D.C. area that’s looking for a local company to help it with traditional and Internet advertising would naturally search on advertising agencies in washington dc. But according to Google data, people search on all kinds of related terms:

• advertising agency washington dc
• advertising companies dc
• advertising firms dc
• advertising services dc
• ad agencies washington dc
• print advertising dc area
• washington dc internet advertising

The variations can be astounding! You might be surprised to find out that the terms people actually use to find businesses like yours are quite different from the terms you think they use.

Fortunately, it’s easy to discover the most search-effective terms for your PPC campaign. The free Google AdWords Keyword Tool lets you view the average search volume per month for your suggested (and related) terms based on Google data from the past 12 months. You can quickly determine whether you’ll get more traffic from ad agency washington dc or washington dc ad agency, for example.

Step 2: Create Specific, Focused Ads
Writing effective ad copy for a PPC campaign is an art, and many companies turn to professional copywriters for help. Not only do you need to follow Google’s guidelines for content and format to the letter, but you also need to make sure the ad will appeal to your target audience and compel them to click through to your landing page.

In a PPC ad, you have just four lines of text to work with:

1. A title (at most, 25 characters, including spaces)
2. A line of ad copy (at 35 characters)
3. Another line of ad copy (at 35 characters)
4. A display URL (also 35 characters max)

It’s a good idea to include the target search term within your ad because that makes the ad more relevant to exactly what the person is searching for. For example, if a potential customer searches on ad agency washington dc, he’s more likely to click an ad that addresses that specific criteria. The more focused you make your ad for a particular term, the better chance you have of a searcher clicking your ad over competing ads that appear on the search results page.

Something like this ad might be a good starting point for a baseline test:

Full-Service Ad Agency                    [22 characters]
Washington DC, Virginia & Maryland:     [35 characters]
Inspired Web/print/multimedia ads        [33 characters]
www.AffordableCreativeServices.com    [34 characters]

Step 3: Sync Up Your Landing Page
The third component of any PPC campaign is the landing page: that is, the page of your Web site where the searcher will end up after clicking your ad. Perhaps contrary to what you might think, sending the searcher to your home page is not necessarily the best tactic. Instead, send them to a custom landing page that’s in sync with both your ad and your target search term, and is effective in motivating the searcher to take action. You can then track these “conversions” to help you measure just how successful your keyword–ad–landing page unit is over time.

What makes a good landing page?

• Keep it simple, short and relevant
• Provide unique content that engages the searcher
• Keep it in sync with what your ad promises
• Prominently display and use the targeted search term
• Provide a form, something to download or a link to additional information that will convert the visitor from a searcher to a qualified lead—or paying customer—for your company

Google calculates a landing page quality score for the landing page of each search term you target to encourage advertisers to provide optimal search experiences for searchers—not to mention better results for you and Google. Creating high-scoring landing pages benefits you by lowering your costs per click and improving your ad positions.

 More Than Meets the Eye
Although there’s more to PPC advertising than you might think at first glance, approaching it with a well-thought-out strategy and deliberate testing will help you reap the rewards it can offer.

 Not enough time to do it right? Consider hiring a company that specializes in managing PPC campaigns. The expertise and project-management services a good company provides lets you stay focused on what you know best: your business.

With Search Engine Strategies (SES) 2008 taking place in Chicago this week, it only seems appropriate to turn our attention to search engine marketing (SEM) in this post.

SEM: Organic SEO and PPC Advertising
At the heart of most SEM strategies are organic search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

SEO is the act of optimizing your Website content with the goal of improving your placement in the list of search engine results that displays when a user types a particular term into a search engine. SEO comprises several activities, including researching keyword phrases that your customers are likely to search on and your competitors haven’t yet discovered, writing relevant and valuable Website copy that uses those keywords, enhancing your site navigation and the HTML code that’s behind each Web page and conducting link-building campaigns.

PPC is an advertising program that displays a list of text ads adjacent to or above the organic or “natural” search results on search engines. What makes PPC different from other types of Internet advertising (e.g., banner ads) is the fact that you pay a fee for your ad only when a user actually clicks on it and visits your Website. Your ad’s position in the displayed ad list depends on the value of your bid for the particular keyword term. Well-known PPC programs include

• Google AdWords
• Yahoo! Search Marketing 
• Microsoft adCenter
• Ask Sponsored Listings

What’s Right for Your Company?
As with most marketing and advertising practices, there’s no single solution that works for every company. You’ll likely need to do both SEO and PPC advertising to enhance your “findability” for customers and potential customers and to improve your competitiveness within your market.

Perhaps an example will best illustrate the potential difference that applying SEO and PPC strategies can make to an SEM program.

“Internet Marketing”
Suppose you are a new company in the greater Washington, D.C. area that offers Web marketing services, and you’d like potential customers to find you when they search on internet marketing. How do you make that happen?

Here’s the landscape for internet marketing and several “longer-tail” keywords within Google. (*Google AdWords Keyword Tool External rate for 12/8/2008)

“Exact” Search Term: internet marketing
# of Competing Pages: 38.9 million
# of Competing Pages with Term in Page Title: 2.42 million
Average Searches/Month: 74,000
Your Cost/Click (CPC—ad positions 1-3)*: $6.10


“Exact” Search Term: advanced internet marketing
# of Competing Pages: 41,100
# of Competing Pages with Term in Page Title: 1,220
Average Searches/Month: 320
Your Cost/Click (CPC—ad positions 1-3)*: $3.49


“Exact” Search Term: serious internet marketing
# of Competing Pages: 23,900
# of Competing Pages with Term in Page Title: 366
Average Searches/Month: 91
Your Cost/Click (CPC—ad positions 1-3)*: $.05


“Exact” Search Term: improve internet marketing
# of Competing Pages: 7,940
# of Competing Pages with Term in Page Title: 128
Average Searches/Month: 58
Your Cost/Click (CPC—ad positions 1-3)*: $.05


“Exact” Search Term: internet marketing washington dc
# of Competing Pages: 2,340
# of Competing Pages with Term in Page Title: 84
Average Searches/Month: 36
Your Cost/Click (CPC—ad positions 1-3)*: $.05


Notice that you face an uphill battle to be found for internet marketing:

• 38.9 million pages already contain that phrase
• 2.4 million pages contain that phrase in their title (so they also might be otherwise optimized for search)

And you might have to spend $54,000/year for that term alone on PPC advertising:

• Each click will cost you $6.10—that’s $4,514/month if 1% of searchers click your ad

Better Alternatives
Now consider the relevant and more specific terms advanced internet marketing, serious internet marketing and improve internet marketing. Although these terms have dramatically lower numbers of searches per month than does internet marketing, do you really need thousands of searches to be successful in your business? Probably not.

Notice the equally dramatic drop in competitors for these terms. With some good SEO, you can easily compete with the hundred or so other pages that might be optimized for these terms.

Finally, notice the reduction in cost for PPC advertising: serious internet marketing spells serious savings for you. At $.05/click, even if all 91 searchers clicked through to your site per month, you’d be out less than $60 per year for your ad placement.

"Internet Marketing Washington D.C."
But what search term is really most relevant to your potential customers? Chances are, they want to know about local companies that can provide the services they need, so they’ll search on internet marketing washington dc.

As you can see from the data, now you’re only competing against fewer than a hundred potentially optimized sites. And although you might see at most only 36 visitors a month, you know those people will be looking for services your company specifically can provide to them. Furthermore, you’ll also be found through PPC advertising that you can afford.

Conclusion? Go for It!
Even though there are no guarantees that SEO and PPC will increase sales for your business, the fact remains that you must be found in the search engines to compete in your market. No one expects you to do it all yourself, however, and you’ll find many businesses that can help you meet your loftiest SEM goals—go ahead, just do a search!