Pay per Click advertising, social media marketing and online reviews are all crucial parts of your online marketing efforts and are tied directly to your website. It is important to understand the benefits from using these types of marketing but also understand that your website is central to everything. As discussed in the previous 2 articles your entire online marketing efforts are tied together almost like a car engine. One small piece breaking can hurt all the other components. Part 1 of this series discussed building your website, how to choose the right digital marketing firm and the importance of content along with tricks with content creation. Part 2 covered the importance of being a “good online citizen” and search engine optimization. This article will cover the importance of Pay per Click advertising, social media marketing and reputation management.
Pay Per Click Advertising
Pay per Click advertising is the process of bidding on certain keywords and paying every time someone clicks on your advertisement. This gives you the ability to instantly be on the first page for any keyword you are targeting for your business. Business owners can use pay per click advertising through Google AdWords, Yahoo, Bing ads, Facebook and pretty much any other website that gets a high volume of traffic. We will cover paid social media marketing (Facebook) in the next section and this will primarily focus on Google Adwords because it generates the vast majority of all website traffic. This does not mean it is wise to ignore the other search engines because typically you can produce results at a lower cost per click. However, the bulk of your traffic (both organically and paid) will be from Google. As of June 2021 – Google’s market share was 92.4%. This section briefly covers PPC advertising – you can also review Pay per Click Advertising advice for additional information.
Is Pay per Click Advertising effective? Yes, it is very effective. On average businesses see a 200% return on investment from PPC with Google. This means that your chances are high you will make money from your investment. It is important to realize the true value of being able to purchase “real estate” on the front page of Google for whatever keyword you choose. It can be very expensive but also can be quite profitable if done properly.
Ad placement is not only based on the amount you bid. It is very common for business owners to think that they can just place a super high bid and that will guarantee them the top spot. Google weighs numerous factors when evaluating the placement of ads – it is not only based on pricing. Here are some of the things that Google evaluates when deciding where to place certain ads.
1. Your Bid Amount – This is the first thing Google reviews and it is important to understand that if you place a maximum bid of $20.00 it does not mean you will be paying that per click. That is the maximum amount you are willing to spend but often it ends up being far less based on all the other factors Google Evaluates.
2. The Quality of your Ads and Landing Page – This is an important factor Google looks at. If you have poorly written ad copy and a landing page that is not effective it is unlikely you will see good results with PPC marketing on Google or any other search engine for that matter. If you have issues mentioned above (in the SEO section about user experience, Part 2 of series) with your website it is important you rectify those immediately. You will pay a higher amount for your ads and have a lower conversion rate because of it. Google will notify you of issues as well.
3. Ad Rank Thresholds – These are used by Google to ensure that certain criteria are reviewed and considered for ad placement. You can review the specific things they mention here.
4. Auction Competitiveness – This is based on how competitive your keywords are. You can go into Google Adwords and check a keyword’s competitiveness to see how you would be ranked against others trying to bid on it as well as what you would be paying per click if you did win that bidding contest. The Google Keyword Planner Tool is extremely helpful especially when getting a grasp on what your monthly budget should be. As an example, the term “divorce lawyer” can range from $5 per click to $33 per click for the first page. “Criminal Lawyer” ranges from $6 to $45 per click. “Plastic Surgery” ranges from $1 -$7 per click and “Medical Spa” ranges from $1-$6 per click.
5. What the Google user actually searched – This is self-explanatory but relevance will matter which is why it is important to set up multiple ads in order to be sure your ad and keywords are relevant for all related searches.
6. Ad Extensions Impact – If you are running ad extensions such as sitelinks, shopping, review snippets and callout extensions it will matter in regards to your actual click through rate and impressions that count towards your overall cost per click. Ad Extensions are well worth using because they will increase your ads conversion.
Seems Simple enough – Do I need a company to help me manage my PPC campaign? It is well worth hiring a company to manage your PPC campaign if you are spending over $1,000 per month. However, choosing the right company is vital to protect yourself. There are a few additional things you need to know when hiring a company to manage your PPC campaign above what you do when choosing your digital marketing firm (discussed in Part 7 of this series).
1. Be Sure you are charged directly by Google. A common trick is for the company to have a “proprietary” system that “gets you lower prices” but you have to pay them directly and they in turn pay Google for the clicks. The companies that do this are typically spending about 15% of what you pay them on actual ads for you and the rest is pure profits for them. It is important that you use your credit card and Google directly charges your card in order to ensure you are not being cheated and so you can monitor the exact amount being spent with Google and the exact amount being spent with the digital marketing firm.
2. The best case scenario is for you to pay your PPC Company either a flat rate based on your monthly spend or a percentage of your actual monthly spend. It is common to spend about 25% on their fees, but it is a wise investment because the amount of work to maintain Google Ads is significant. Also, if you are not using a professional that constantly monitors and adapts your ads you are likely paying a much higher amount per click by trying to do it yourself, or having a friend with little knowledge “helping you out.” Those savings alone are well worth their fees.
3. There are numerous other factors to consider and the company that handles your SEO does not have to handle your PPC – and often it is a better case for you to have it set up that way. There are some cases where you have companies that specialize in both but often companies are specialized in one and not another. It should be rather evident when you are researching the company if that is something they excel at.
Another major benefit with PPC is the tracking is incredible – it is set up where you know almost exactly what your return on investment is, what is working and not working and additional areas of opportunity. It can be set up that you will know every single conversion you have from every dollar you spend on pay per click advertising.
SayWhat Consulting are experts at PPC marketing and we can assist you in finding the right company and fit for your needs. You can learn more about Pay per Click Advertising and also read about our Business Owner Consulting Program.
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. It is one of the most ideal marketing avenues because its users openly provide detailed information about what they like, what they are interested in and what type of businesses they visit or purchase from. Our focus in the section will be on Facebook primarily because they generate the largest volume of leads and traffic but the same principles can be followed across most platforms. Importantly, this does not mean you should ignore the other social media platforms, without writing a novel it is just more effective to only cover them in this section.
There are a number of benefits of using social media marketing: you can use it as a platform for customer service and engagement, share information on your company’s products and services, launch specials, gain feedback from customers about what they want to see and experience from your brand, grow your business through paid advertising and so much more. This section covers mainly an overview with details on the benefits of social media marketing along with insights into the best ways to get the highest return on investment. We will cover the most common mistakes as well – visit our site for more detailed information on social media marketing.
What is Social Media Marketing (SMM)? The goal of social media marketing is to increase brand exposure, build awareness and gain new customers through lead generation including custom lead forms, emails and phone calls into your office. There are also systems in place to be able to chat directly with potential clients on Facebook which gives them direct access to your company. SMM is very effective and financially a solid investment because the costs are less expensive than most marketing platforms out there. Social Media Marketing has two important segments we will focus on in this section which is generating paid and unpaid results. There are many commonalities between the two and both have the same goal of increasing brand awareness, the amount of people following your business, exposure and generating new and repeat revenue for your business.
Is Social Media Marketing Cost Effective? It is known as one of the most cost efficient digital marketing options available. SMM is very cost effective but like all marketing it is easy to go from cost effective to excessively spending. The social media sites are well versed in creating attractive opportunities for you as the business owner and advertiser – they constantly provide you with options to spend a few more dollars a day to increase traffic just a bit more which can add up over time. If it is making you money then you should do it but if you are not tracking results you are likely wasting marketing dollars. Tracking is vital for any marketing campaign on any platform. SMM is very unique because their tracking systems in place give you very solid ideas on what is and what is not working. It is easy to track results with social media marketing but you have to invest the time and effort into doing it.
What are examples of free social media marketing strategies? Keep in mind that the goal of social media marketing is to increase sales and brand awareness – it is important to understand you do not have to pay for all your traffic. Paid traffic is quite effective but having a specific social media marketing plan will allow you to effectively generate free traffic and the efforts invested into this will also increase the effectiveness of your paid advertising as well. There are a number of things you can do to increase your social media traffic for free.
5 things to help increase your social media traffic for free
1. Content. As with all digital marketing efforts, quality content will get you the best possible results. It needs to be engaging, creative and information that people interested in your type of business would find relevant. It is extremely wise to have a specific content strategy that you use to keep your messaging consistent and relevant. The goal is for people that follow your business to find your content interesting enough (or funny enough) to share on their profile. This then opens your business up to their friends, who may then like your business page or start following you. Content is vital to your success on social media sites and time must be invested in it to be successful.
2. Consistent Posting. It is important for you to post consistently. It is common for businesses to post frequently but then get busy and forget to post. You will then lose exposure because you are not posting new content and giving people that follow your business information they may find useful. Facebook has a posting calendar where you can literally create all of your posts for the month, schedule them and then you are done with it for the full month. You need someone to be dedicated to this. Ideally, you will have a company handling your social media marketing because it requires more involvement than just that, but scheduling posts is an effective way to be successful. Also the social media sites will give you insights into when the best time to post is for your business and it is important that you follow that advice.
3. Hashtags will generate traffic. Hashtags are still worth using because they will show the relevance of your content and can produce more exposure for you. As an example, if you are a criminal lawyer and you post information about the negatives of driving under the influence (DUI) you would want to hashtag relevant tags that might generate relevant traffic. Tagging things like #DUI would be considered a relevant tag, or #MADD (mothers against drunk driving) would also be relevant. Tagging irrelevant things will not generate traffic for you and can harm your post because it can be seen as spamming. An example of spam tagging would be hashtagging every automaker in hopes that anyone following them would see your post. If it feels like you are trying to trick people into seeing your posts it likely would be considered spammy. You can also track current hashtag trends as well to see if there is anything relevant for your business.
4. Interesting Visuals and Videos. If you have been on social media platforms lately you notice that the things which go viral are interesting images and interesting videos. This should be part of your content marketing plan. However, it is important that you do this with the goal of providing your potential clients with information they will find helpful. It is common for businesses to post things that have nothing to do with their business in hopes of a viral moment. It is just a bad idea – viral moments are rare but the most important thing you can do is provide interesting content with your target market in mind. Your goal is to expand your potential client reach and the more visual and interesting your content is the higher the chance you will succeed.
5. Be Active and Engage – It is important to actively engage your followers and people that like your posts. There are a few tricks you can use to make this easier but depending on the size of your business it usually is ideal to hire a company to do it for you. If you receive comments from your posts, it is important you reply to them and reply quickly. If someone likes your post, Facebook has a function that you can invite them easily to like your page therefore expanding your audience.
There are numerous free tactics you can use for free traffic from social media marketing. If you want to learn more visit SayWhat Consulting.
What about Paid Advertising on Social Media? Paid advertising on social media sites as mentioned above is extremely effective and well worth investing in. Please keep in mind the options mentioned above for free traffic are all vital for your paid marketing efforts as well. Because I covered those already they will not be mentioned again here but are quite important.
There are numerous (dozens) of options when you decide to begin paid advertising on social media sites. As mentioned above, this will only focus on Facebook. Some of the most popular types of paid advertising are boosting your post, ads to generate leads into your business, ads to generate phone calls and ads to generate clicks to your website. There are dozens of options and a combination is typically the best marketing strategy for your business. You can choose to spend whatever you want in order to generate traffic you are interested in. We have worked with clients that have spent $900 a month all the way up to $75,000 a month. One quick note – it is ideal and smartest to hire a pro to help you with this because it can get complicated quickly but also their expertise can assist you in lowering your costs, targeting your niche and increasing your conversions.
Here are 5 things to help with your paid marketing efforts on social media.
1. Focus on Conversions – The most important thing when you are paying for advertising is to convert the targeted audience into actual paying customers. Marketing boils down to that – every dollar you spend should generate a positive return on investment for your business. If it is not then you are doing something wrong. Tracking on social media is advanced and you should be able to have a very good idea of exactly what ads are and are not making you money. All of your marketing decisions need to focus on conversion. Every business has different definitions of a conversion and they can vary per marketing campaign as well but you have to focus on that or you will be spending money unnecessarily.
2. Focus on Demographics and Location – You likely have a specific target market ranging in age, location, interests and so on. Social Media Marketing allows you to focus ads specifically on those needs and you can target people specifically within a certain range of your business that are between certain ages and have certain likes. It is wise to set up multiple different audiences so you can have different ads for different groups of potential clients.
3. Spend Small at First – With all advertising it is usually wise to not spend an enormous amount initially until you test the market a bit. I always suggest spending the first month trying multiple different styles of marketing in order to figure out what will work best for you. You also want to generate the highest return on investment and sometimes the most obvious ways to do that are not the most effective.
4. A/B Testing Is Important – With all paid marketing you should be doing A/B testing which is simply comparing two different ways of advertising and seeing which one converts better. You should have at least 2 ads running at any given time so you can compare results and then focus on what works best for your business. You can then choose the better performing ads which will result in a higher return on investment for you.
5. Retargeting – Do you ever notice that when you go to a certain website then all of a sudden you start seeing advertisements for those products everywhere you go? In a nutshell, that is retargeting and it is extremely effective because your business follows the user around the internet to remind them about your business. It is an excellent way of generating repeat visitors and getting clients that you already know are interested in your products and services. This has been an extremely effective marketing tool for every business we work with.
SayWhat Consulting can assist you in finding the right social media marketing firm for your business as part of our Business Owner Consulting Program.
Reputation Management (Online Reviews)
Reputation Management is the process of actively increasing your online reputation through engagement, increasing the amount of positive reviews of your business and doing everything possible to create a great customer experience in order to avoid negative feedback. There is a vast amount of information on SayWhat Consulting in reference to reputation management but here are important concepts to understand when it comes to your online reviews. Your online reputation affects your Search engine optimization, map placement, pay per click ads and overall conversion. It is vital to focus on this important element of your business.
1. It is critical that your business has a detailed plan to handle your online reputation. This includes a plan to generate new online reviews, what to do with bad reviews and specifically targeting which review sites are most valuable to your business or are in need of more positive reviews. If you are not actively monitoring your online reputation you are likely losing thousands weekly in lost customers. You are still in business because the majority of your customers are happy – it is your job to ensure those happy clients are leaving reviews for your business online.
2. Respond to ALL reviews. It is important for your business to respond publicly to both positive and negative reviews for numerous reasons. It is important to thank customers that chose to take the time to go to a website and leave positive feedback. As importantly, when potential customers are considering your company this will show them that you value your customers both before and after they use your services. It is also important to respond to negative reviews because it allows you to address the specific issue that was brought up publicly which your potential clients will read. Often, negative reviews are not legitimate and are fake (usually purchased by a competitor) and it is wise to specifically address those reviews by stating that you have no record of doing business with that person and for them to call your office directly for assistance.
3. Reviews give you clear guidance on business operation improvements. Negative reviews are no fun to get but if there is a consistent theme to the reviews it is important you make business changes to fix those issues. Often customers will focus on minor issues that are easy to resolve with simple operational changes. If customers complain about long hold times, it would be wise to figure out a solution to that specific issue. Use negative reviews as guidance to improve your business operations and services – honest feedback is hard to come by and as themes develop they are likely very accurate.
4. Negative Reviews can be removed. There are instances where negative reviews can be removed if they meet certain criteria. This is not an easy process but in some cases can be done quite quickly, depending on the review website. Contact us if you need help with this specifically.
5. No Company is perfect or expected to be perfect. It is important for you to understand that there is no such thing as the perfect company and negative reviews are a natural part of business. Any person with common sense will not trust a company that has all 5 star reviews – it is impossible for a company to satisfy every single customer if they have been in business for any length of time. Of course that is the ultimate goal but realistically no company is perfect even though we all strive to be.
80% of internet user’s trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. This shows you exactly how valuable every single positive review is to your long term financial stability. Negative reviews can hurt your growth, cash flow and incoming leads. Negative reviews can also hurt your search engine ranking positions, cost of paid advertising amongst numerous other things.
It is vital that you have a specific reputation management strategy in order to ensure your success online. SayWhat Consulting offers a free online marketing audit which goes over your websites performance, conversion, online reputation, social media marketing and more.
Your online marketing efforts are vital to the success of your business both in the short and long term. Having a well thought out marketing plan will assist you in making the right choices when it comes to digital marketing. It is also important to focus on everything mentioned in this three part series about your website and online marketing efforts. It is important for you to understand that everything you do online is tied together and factors into your online rankings, conversions and amount of new customers that choose your business.
Written by David Phillips, CEO and Founder of SayWhat Consulting. With over 20 years of experience, Mr. Phillips has consulted with small, medium and large businesses in marketing, business management, staff training and day-to-day operations. SayWhat assists clients in numerous industries including cosmetic surgeons, plastic surgeons, med spas and attorneys in family law and criminal law. We also assist other industries as well and our primary clients are small and medium sized businesses.