by Karl Hudson | Mar 31, 2013 | Pay Per Click Marketing
Using the internet to advertise products and services is not only extremely effective, it is also very competitive. When it comes to getting traffic (viewers/potential customers) to a website there are many options. Two of the most popular are pay-per-click and search-engine-optimization (SEO).
Getting your website to the top of the rankings in the search engines is the name of the game and pay-per-click and SEO are targeted for doing just that. There is one big difference between the two methods; time. With pay-per-click you can have a campaign up and in the sponsored listings in minutes; SEO on the other hand can take several weeks or months to get your website ranked.
Pay-per-click is quite simply one of the easiest and cheapest ways to advertise on the internet today, as long as you do your research. Most search engines offer some form of pay-per-click advertising program. While they may differ in the user interface and how ads are ranked they all have one thing in common. Every time a web surfer clicks an the ad that advertiser has to pay a fee.
There are pros and con’s when it comes to a pay-per-click marketing campaign. If you monitor your campaigns closely and continually learn from you mistakes it can be a very effective money maker. One of its biggest pros is you don’t have to fine tune your web pages to adjust your position in the search engines. It is all based on how much you are bidding and how well your page converts.
One of the biggest pros is how quickly and easily you can get an ad up and diverting traffic to your web site. Once you set up your ad, your bids and the link to your website you are up and running. There is nothing too technical about it; it just comes down to learning about your market and giving them what they want.
The con of a pay-per-click business is that you are essentially engaging in a bidding war. The higher bidder gets the higher position in the search results. If you are outbid your position will drop. To regain your position you will have to raise your bid which can result in less profit. The more popular the keywords you’re bidding on the higher the bids are going to be.
All it takes is some simple math to figure out if your pay-per-click campaign is cost effective. What you need to figure out is what the cost per click of each visitor to your site is and how much profit per click you are or will be expecting to make is. Most marketers base this on 100 clicks and a 1% conversion rate. If your product costs $25 then you need to figure what the break even point is for your highest bid. For every 100 clicks you get one sale worth $25. That breaks down to a profit per click of 25 cents to break even. But this is a business and the idea is to make a profit. Any bid under 25 cents will be profitable and the lower you can bid and keep a good position the bigger the return on investment (ROI).
Learning everything you can about keyword research and how they relate to the market you are targeting is the key to pay-per-click success. There is no limit to the amount of keywords you can use and the more targeted means a bigger ROI.
Your ad copy is the most crucial part of your pay-per-click marketing. Your description of what product you are offering needs to be as specific as possible to attract visitors who are looking to buy what you are offering. Keep it in mind that pay-per-click ads are short and to the point. The words you use must be specific, to the point and enticing to potential buyers.
Once you have a pay-per-click campaign up and running it is vitally important that you monitor your bids and ad placement. Trying to get a top ranking is not always necessary, but you do want to be in the middle of the first page. By keeping close track of your bids you can keep the battle going for the prime positions and create the greatest return on investment. The whole purpose of pay-per-click marketing is to make money, not win the bidding war. In many ways you would rather win the battle than the War with PPC advertising.
To win at pay-per-click marketing you must not only monitor your campaigns closely but you must also analyze and research visitor behavior and the markets you are engaged in. You must take all these considerations into account to insure that your pay-per-click campaigns are a success.
by Karl Hudson | Mar 29, 2013 | Social Media Marketing
Increasing the traffic to your business website is extremely beneficial to the growth of your business. Listed below are the five best and most effective ways of growing your business online.
Market Research Specific to your Business
Identify a keyword specific to your business using the Google keyword tool. The highest ranked domains in Google for this keyword should be noted. By using Quantcast, an accurate demographic understanding of your market is possible. Next, use Google analytics to get a detailed picture of traffic to your website. Information about bounce rates, length of visits, and other media referrals can be obtained by the use of Google analytics.
Link Your Facebook and Twitter Accounts to your Business
If you have not yet linked your Facebook and Twitter accounts to your business, it is essential that you do them immediately. These two accounts are indispensable to growing your business online. Further, you should style your Facebook page with your business logo, and also integrate your business brand. Your presence in the social media builds trust with business clients.
Start Your Own Blogs
The traffic to your business website can be improved dramatically by posting your blogs on your Blogger page in WordPress. You can visually integrate your blogs to your website to improve traffic further. Take care to input the main keyword in the title of your blogs. You must have your keyword preferably at least one time in the body of the blog as well. For continued good traffic to your business website, your blog must be updated once in a week or once in two weeks.
Integrate Search Engine Optimisation Copywriting for Your Business Website
Re-write and re-design your business website to be more suitable for SEO. This will help to improve the Google rankings of your website. An improvement in the Google rankings automatically leads to an increase in your business turn-over.
Hire a Virtual Assistant
Hiring a Virtual Assistant will give you more time to concentrate on critical business engagements. The Virtual Assistant can do the blog posting on various sites for you. Further, your article marketing can also be taken care of by the same person.
To summarise, it can be said that by adopting these five strategies, you can increase your business online. Moreover, hiring a Virtual Assistant ensures that you have more time and freedom to concentrate on your business activities.
by Karl Hudson | Mar 15, 2013 | Social Media Marketing
There are plenty of examples in nature where symmetry and proportions rule. They have been used since time immemorial in various fields including art and architecture. Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man is perhaps the best example of how nature celebrates symmetry. Today, graphic designers all over the world use symmetry and proportions through the grid based design theory. The main idea behind a grid based design is to create a solid visual and structural balance in websites. When the layout appears structured, websites seem to be visually appealing can easy to follow. The New York Times website and Yahoo! are some of the best examples of grid based designs
Although the grid based system was a product of the Constructivist Art, it slowly yet steadily moved into the domain of commercial design. When it comes to using the grid based approach, it is all about using mathematics where ratios and equations dominate the design. As a student interested in this approach, you will have to be familiar with ratios and proportions; from rational, whole number ratios, and irrational proportions. These ratios will have to be used to come up with designs that are functional, coherent, yet aesthetically appealing. Thus as you can see grids are not always about squares, it is about proportions. Graphic designers today have access to several tools to design their own grid based design. Some of these include:
phiRatio e67: This is an iOS tool that helps designers to calculate the different proportions including the ‘Golden Proportion’. For the uninitiated, the ‘Golden Proportion’ refers to a rule that if you were to divide a line into two parts, the longer part divided by the smaller part is equal to the sum of the two parts divided by the longer part. This tool is very useful when designing layouts, defining canvas sizes, and deciding typographical proportions.
Fluid Baseline Grid System: This is an HTML & CSS3 development kit that provides a foundation to design websites with ease. They can be used create a visual rhythm and structural balance to help the experience of predictable patterns.
Guide: This is a column, rows and midpoint tool for Photoshop CS4 and CS5. And best of all, this is free.
There are several other tools that can help graphic designers come up with designs that help in designing a layout. While this is an effective tool to help designers come up with effective layouts for their website designs, it is also important for them to embrace asymmetry and chaos with equal enthusiasm. Chaos when used effectively adds more character to a design than order and balance. It should be the effort of the designer to excel in designs of both these characters.
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by Karl Hudson | Feb 28, 2013 | Search Engine Optimisation
Search engine optimisation is a very broad concept that keeps evolving day in day out. No one can finish talking about it, but if we narrow down the key points then we can clearly get its intention and how it works. Let me, for instance, start by giving a clear example as to what SEO is based upon. Let’s say you have a blog and your niche is fashion.
When people go online, they can enter any search terms in the search engines like “fashion models” and even “fashion show”. This will lead to a display of results from the top ranked to the bottom. This is a direct application of search engine optimization which mainly revolves around keywords and content. As I have earlier stated, SEO is evolving and sites are being ranked according to the value of content that is provided. Remember that to succeed in SEO, you must specialize in a specific niche. If it is fashion, stick to it and write anything about it with the promise of appearing among the top with all other fashion sites. Content provided should be reader friendly and not directed to the search engines.
As content plays a major role, it is very crucial that you know how the demand of the keywords in your niche are. We have tools that are free that will help you in keyword research and even propose the best keywords that you can use. Google Adwords keywords tool will prove to be a very crucial resource in SEO, if you need free resources. You can use the SEO Moz’s subscription, if it is well with you.
You can then track the records and statistics of your website to know how your efforts are faring. Installing Google Analytics, demographics will give you a clear indication on keywords that are not doing well, hence modification to achieve better results.
All said, SEO will continue to evolve in a bid to satisfy those searching for anything online. That is why content will be chief in all the searches.
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by Karl Hudson | Feb 22, 2013 | Marketing
“Colors are the smiles of nature,” said Leigh Hunt, the 18th century British poet. Indeed colors manage to evoke strong emotions in us. They can be subjective as well; while some colors may cause a person to smile, the same color may cause a splitting headache in another. Culture also plays an crucial role in the acceptance of color. For instance, the Japanese see the color white as fortunate, but the Hindus in India consider it inauspicious to wear white clothes for ceremonies and functions.
Color has influenced us a lot, especially when we chose to purchase things. In fact, a 2004 research conducted by the Secretariat of the Seoul International Color Expo determined that more than 92.6 per cent of people attributed their purchasing decisions to color, and 84.7 per cent people thought that the color of a product was a key factor when choosing a product. Thus, everyone from marketers to other professionals engaged in the visual arts find it helpful to know more about colors and their meanings.
While reams of documents have been wasted to explain the concept of color theory, it all boils down to three basic categories of color theory; the color wheel, the color harmony, and the context in which they are used. While the color wheel refers to a circle based on red, yellow and blue, color harmony refers to the arrangement of these colors in a manner that is pleasing to the senses, and color context refers to the behavior of colors in relation to other colors and shapes. Using this theory students of visual arts learn how different colors affect individual people. Below is the meaning of colors and the manner in which they are positively used:
Red: Needless to say, red is a warm color and is associated with fire, passion, violence and even love. In fact, Cupid’s heart is always red in color. It is also the color of anger. Red is the color of danger; that is perhaps why danger symbols are depicted in red. Students of the visual arts use Red to define power and passion. While brighter reds represent energy, darker shades of red, portray elegance and power. This color has different meanings in a different culture. Thus, while red is the color of the Hindu bride, it is a color of mourning in Africa.
Green: Green can mean opposing influences. For instance, while it represents growth, beginning, renewal and abundance, it can also mean jealousy (hence the phrase green with envy). It has also become associated with the cause of the environment (go green).
Blue: Blue represents strength in some cultures and hence baby boys are often associated with the color blue. The color is also associated with sadness in the English literature (feeling blue). Blue has religious connotations as well. For instance, the Virgin Mary is known to wear blue robes. Blue gives a sense of reliability.
These are just some colors. A study of color therapy is sure to enlighten us. The underlying fact remains that some colors are used to reflect energy, passion, and positivity, cool colors are used to represent professionalism and calm.
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by Karl Hudson | Feb 19, 2013 | Marketing
Web Marketing is the process of promoting your web site and making it well known throughout the Internet. There are several different types of web marketing. The most important is submitting the site to search engines so that it is easily found by your potential customers when they do a search for goods and services that they require. However, most people often forget that there are other important ways to improve the profile of your business online. You need to create links from other sites, so that if someone is browsing for something similar to what you provide they may be able to link back to you. This could be in the form of advertisements, advertising articles, or links via forums or blogs. Your website will need to contain good quality content so that when search engines are looking at it they will find relevant and interesting topics to link from. You will need to make sure that anything you think potential customers will be looking for are mentioned in your pages.
Companies are now taking advantage of the large number of people using social media sites such as Facebook. They will create a presence on these site visitors by competitions or give aways. These users will then recommend this to their friends and this will result in the product or service being advertised to a lot of people. Being able to attract lots of visitors to your advertisements on social networking sites is a skill that marketing companies are now learning a lot about.
There are lots of potential areas on the Internet where you can be promoting your company. You can link from forums, blogs, chat rooms, banner advertisements on relevant sites, links from complementary industries and articles on news sites. If your competitors are taking advantage of all these potential advertising possibilities then you could find that you are losing a lot of potential customers to them.
It should be becoming clear why web marketing is important and that it is well worth investing some money in improving the profile of your company on the Internet. There are many companies that specialize in this kind of work and will be able to help you to promote your business in an appropriate way. You will be able to discuss the amount of money that you think you should be spending and how best to use this on the Internet so that your company keeps its image and will be able to attract a large number of potential new visitors.
So web marketing is an important way of building up the profile of your company and attracting new customers, as well as keeping your brand in the mind of your current customers. It will ensure that your web presence is attracting customers and your web site is getting as many visitors as possible. If you want to have a very successful web campaign then it is important that you consider as many different ways of marketing your company online as possible.
by Karl Hudson | Feb 14, 2013 | Social Media Marketing
When creating a budget for a business that includes website design cost, it is important for the owner to consider the different variables that will determine the final cost of this type of project. The cost of website design can vary significantly depending upon what type of site the business wants to develop and what functions and features will be included in the design of the site.
The majority of website designers charge a business on a project basis. This does not include the additional fee that will be charged if there are any changes, additions, etc. This fee is open-ended and can grow at an astounding rate so it is important for an individual to have a clear vision of what they want before they compare the rates for website design cost.
Knowing what the purpose and intent of the website will be will be a definite factor in what type of website you are wishing to employ. If the website will be used primarily as an advertising tool that will not require information on every page to be updated regularly then a static website will be sufficient to meet most of the needs of a small business. However, if a website designer is asked to create a static website then this means there is a lot of work involved post creation, as in manually updating each page individually as that is the way it would have had to been created.
Businesses may require a website to be more interactive, provide forms and flow seamlessly and may request a dynamic website which creates web pages, interactive forms, updates, etc., and or automatically using a database. This then means that the website designer needs to spend the most of his/her time on databases and templates for the site, which allows for automatic features that are provided.
There are six different web design layouts that are used by most designers frequently. When an individual views websites whilst surfing the web they may begin to see layout patterns appear. Website colours, styles, etc., these are not static and must be updated regularly to be effective.
If a business should choose to have a static website designed then they need to understand that entails hiring an extra member of staff or losing a member of staff from their workforce who is computer/internet savvy; This is to maintain the website, giving regular updates to keep up to date with the current trends, too keep customers interested and to keep achieving the highest cliental.
In a perfect world you would like to hire a combination website developer and designer. The website developer has expertise in the necessary programming language and practical elements of creating a website while the website designer has the artistic expertise to create a website that flows and will have a longer marketing effectiveness without to much maintenance. The companies that offer both of these experts are normally always the best choice for getting an easily manageable, longevity of a website. Created to the standard you, as the client in this case, would like to achieve for you business front on the Internet.
by Karl Hudson | Feb 12, 2013 | Pay Per Click Marketing
People often get taken back when they hear the term pay per click (PPC), If they are not familiar with online advertising. It increasingly gets worse when you inform them, PPC advertising can increase their Return on Investment (ROI).
Infact, PPC is quite an easy thing to understand if you consult with a PPC expert to find enlightenment on the full details. Before one goes to consult an expert, I wrote this article in hope that it will shed some light on the advantages of PPC advertisements.
Pay per click, commonly abbreviated to PPC, is an online advertising
method. This is used to create a text format advert that then is placed
on the results page within search engines. The Ad normally appears to the side and on top of the organic search results. You only pay for the advertising campaign if people click on your ad. Hence, the term “Pay per click”. Now, it’s time to inform you of the main advantages
of this advertising method:
- Immediate Results: It is without doubt a faster solution to recieve immediate results in terms of getting visitors to a website when compared to SEO (Search Engine Optimisiation). This is due to the full benefits of an SEO campaign taking weeks or months to become apparent. With PPC, your Ad will be visible on the search result page once your PPC campaign with either Yahoo, MSN or Google goes live. Within your campaign you set the amount you are willing to pay per click. This allows you to outbid other competitors so potentially your Ad will be displayed in the first PPC position. (The best position).
- Cost Control: You control your budget spent on each campaign. This is one way to make sure your marketing plan for different sections of your products or services offered, will achieve the best targeted result. For instance, you may only want to spend $ 60 daily for product A and $ 150 daily for product B.
- Geographically Targeted: A key benefit of using PPC advertising is that you can target your audience geographically. You do not need to have a physical store in Britain in order to target potential clients from Britain. All you need to do in the PPC campaign settings is select Britain as the targeted country. As a result, it will help you target highly qualified visitors to your website.
- Seasonal Marketing Approach: If you sell a product or service that depends on the season, such as only being needed during the festive season, then PPC campaign can help you create a tactical campaign during the required time period. You can actually define Ad scheduling where you choose to run your campaign only on the exact days and in fact the hours you want. If you have certain promotion on a specific day, PPC is definitely your solution to reach the online crowd.
As an Internet Marketing company we help multiple clients to reach their business goals online. PPC is a validated technique that we use for quality control analysis if asked for by our clients.
Learn more about GetMediaWise Pay Per Click Services. Click here..
by Karl Hudson | Feb 8, 2013 | Pay Per Click Marketing
When doing Pay Per Click advertising, the biggest challenge is fitting in all of the messages an advertiser wants to convey into the very limited space made available by the search engines. However, by looking at each section with a fine tooth comb, marketers can change their approach and look at ad copy writing as filling out a formula for more effective advertising.
The first part of the ad is the headline. The main purpose of the headline is to bring focus to the ad itself. After all, if no one takes a look at the headline, they probably won’t look at the add or rest of the information. Google places keywords that link between the search query and ad copy in bold, so this is one way to bring out the ad’s message, although a more creative copy can also be a winner even if it is not bolded.
The next part of the ad is the first line of the description. This can be longer than the headline, and its purpose is to start focusing on features, benefits, and the unique selling point/proposals of the company or products/service itself. This should give the searcher a reason to keep reading the ad. Adding punctuation at the end of the first line can help to make it stand out more if it is in the first one or two places of the sponsored search results.
The third part of the ad is the second line of description. This section should mainly focus on the call to arms (action) after the benefit message is given in the first line. Using an exclamation point is normally a good idea, as the main goal is to convince the searcher to click on the ad. That is if they find the message relevant to their search.
Finally, the display URL must be hand in hand with every ad that is displayed. However, the display URL does not have to be the exact landing page URL that is on the website. The root domain must be the same, but the landing page does not have to match the displayed URL exactly. Thus, it is vital to think of this as an opportunity to reinforce the marketing message, rather than simply conveying information about the website itself.
There are a number of different ad copy formulas that can be followed for effective marketing messages. I have took the liberty of listing a couple here below:
Engaging Headline > Feature > Benefit > Display URL
Engaging Headline > Benefit > Call to Action > Display URL
Engaging Headline > Unique Selling Proposition > Call to Action > Display URL
One final point is that it is often enlightening to use this information to analyze competitors’ advertisements and break them down into their component parts. A lot of times, marketers focus simply on features and calls to action, while leaving out an effective headline and not using the display URL to its maximum potential.
Learn more about our Pay Per Click Services. https://old.getmediawise.com/
by Karl Hudson | Jan 18, 2013 | Marketing
The huge success of e-commerce sites like eBay have led to a string of websites that thrive on gullible customers looking for cheap discounts and bargains. A typical fraud is when you buy a product, and it doesn’t arrive, or you a product that is absolutely different from what arrives on delivery. Of the several ways to identify if a site is genuine, is to check for the verification sticker on a site. There are several important reasons why verification is important in international marketing:
- Establishing Confidence: E-tailing is all about building confidence in the minds of the buyers. A single breach of trust isn’t likely to hurt the buyer, as much as it hurts the reputation of the seller. A small doubt on the security the site can create a permanent scar on the customer’s mind about the site. There are several instances of companies losing business because of a small relapse of verification in international marketing.
- Increased Profits: A recent report by Symantec has found that customers often skip sites that do not display the ‘Verified’ sticker. As an e-tailer, you can ill afford to lose precious clientele. All that it requires to establish his confidence is a sticker that claims that it has been verified by VISA, SSL or Google.
Some popular seals used in verification in international marketing include:
- SSL: SSL or Secure Socket Layer is a protocol created by Netscape and used to ensure transactions between servers and browsers. To use this seal websites are required to obtain an SSL Certification that is loaded in the browser. This gives you information about the owner of the certificate, e-mail address, owner’s name, duration of validity, resource location etc As earlier said your browser is loaded with the root certificate that is obtained from well known Certification Authorities that hold information on all including revoked certificates. The SSL protocol uses a third party CA to identify one and sometimes both end of the transaction.
- VISA: Needless to say, VISA is a well-known electronic payment system. It aims to protect online transactions through Verified VISA. With Verified VISA, you have the protection that an extra layer of security is added to verify both parties to the transaction. There are several case studies that prove that verification by VISA has helped online businesses gain the trust and confidence of customers.
When people check these certifications it assures them that they can trust the site and any transactions that will take place.
