Internet Marketing Blog

Internet Marketing: The Importance Of Subtlety

Nick — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:07:49 +0000

It’s not too many years since internet marketing was anything but subtle. Users’ experience of surfing the web was frequently disrupted by pop-up adverts that obscured the page and were often completely irrelevant to the content being read. It wasn’t long before the use of pop-up blockers became widespread. As users’ experience and knowledge of the internet have developed, so have tools and programs for dealing with annoying and unwanted advertising, and advertising has had to become much more refined, and more ethical, as a result.

Successful internet marketing is now marketing that adds to, rather than disrupts, a user’s experience. Subtlety is the key here; good advertising should ensure that the right information is there at the right time for the potential customer. For example, advertising can provide direct links to the very products someone is already reading about, offering a shortcut so that rather than being an unwanted interruption, the advertising is performing a service. Intelligent use of key terms can mean that advertising has an intuitive feel to it, perhaps offering links to further information or other products that may be of interest to the reader.

The use of subtlety has transformed web marketing from being one of the biggest drawbacks of the internet to a useful addition. The internet and its users have evolved to the point at which good advertising is no longer seen as something to be combated. At Click Consult, we understand the need to have ethical marketing campaigns that will be welcomed by potential customers.

Direct Or Network Affiliates

Dan — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:30:43 +0000

There are two main types of affiliate; network and direct – both have advantages and disadvantages. A network will take care of your affiliates and ensure they are paid correctly and promptly on your behalf. However, you will have to pay for this service, which can reduce your profit margin. A direct affiliate campaign may initially take up more of your time, but has distinct advantages.

One of the main advantages of creating your own affiliate network is being able to build a solid working relationship. You will be able to source your own affiliates and work with them to ensure a sound knowledge of your products in order to help them make sales. A large network of affiliates may not be interested in your merchandise and they be signed up to many companies, trying to make as many sales as possible. Whilst this may seem like a good idea in theory, in practice affiliate marketing requires more work to make sales.

Creating an affiliate marketing campaign is time consuming but will eventually pay huge rewards. Outsourcing your affiliate marketing campaign to a professional company such as here at Click Consult will enable you to concentrate on other aspects of your business, whilst being confident that your affiliate programme is working efficiently.

Many merchants may join a network believing that the greater number of affiliates that promote their merchandise, the higher the profits. This is not the case as many affiliates do not work efficiently and therefore make very few sales. An affiliate marketing campaign which is created by a professional web marketing company will help you to secure profitable results.

Advantages Of Affiliate Marketing

Dan — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:04:51 +0000

Affiliate marketing has many advantages for both parties, the merchant and affiliate, with low investment costs and a huge return if time and effort are spent on the business. An affiliate can promote the merchandise of a merchant on his website and can choose the merchants he wants to work for. A merchant has a larger initial investment but his merchandise will be presented to a much larger audience as well as only having to pay his affiliates for resulting sales.

A merchant will reap the rewards of recruiting an increased number of affiliates to promote his products; widening his horizons and gaining larger traffic synergies as well as building his brand. This can actually be compared to a physical sales force that will only be paid for results, whether that is based on a sale or a referral.

There are disadvantages for merchants as they have to pay for the manufacture of a product as well as manage their affiliate marketing campaign. Affiliates have to be managed much like you would run a sales team. Creating marketing tools and promotional materials is time consuming and requires a great deal of imagination if you are going to attract the eye of an affiliate who is popular.

The disadvantages of affiliate marketing can be overcome by outsourcing your affiliate marketing campaign to a company such as here at Click Consult where we will ensure you maximise your return on investment. The advantages of affiliate marketing far outweigh the disadvantages, especially if you enlist a professional web marketing company.

Bad Press Releases Have Big Impact

Susie — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:14:40 +0000

Anyone can write an online press release, can’t they? Isn’t it just a case of jamming words together? Perhaps most business owners are aware that an online press release requires a little more finesse than a second-grade writing exercise, but many still overlook the need for professional writing.

A press release is a form of web marketing material, yet it’s often treated as a simple office document. While companies are content to spend thousands on the creation of a simple banner ad, the one-page text of a press release is usually clumped together by anyone who happens to be free.

The benefits of a good press release are fairly clear, and you can discuss this with us at Click Consult. The outcome of a bad press release isn’t something that is often talked about. It is this, more than anything else that should prompt investment in a good press release.

A badly-written press release makes your company look bad, plain and simple. As it’s online, it’s likely to come up every time someone does a direct search on your business. It’s also likely to continue to come up in such a search for years to come, unless you manage to have it taken down.

A well-written press release should be able to attract attention. If you’re using an internet marketing company, the press release is likely to be posted in the areas of the net most likely to get attention. They’re also increasingly likely to work your site’s SEO into the equation. If you don’t have a specialist on board, talk to one.

What Is Blue Hat SEO?

Nick — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:00:15 +0000

The wardrobe of SEO tricks and techniques has expanded as ecommerce and internet marketing has evolved. So much so that there is now a new colour hat being used to describe the study of advanced internet marketing and SEO techniques. Blue hat SEO encompasses white hat SEO methods, through to black hat. The choice between slow results with long term benefit, or quick results with risk of being penalised used to be a less complex one than it has become. Those wearing grey hats are busy pushing the boundaries of risk in order to get the best results as quickly as possible, but now there is a real appetite for getting into the technical guts of search engine optimisation.

Blue hatters are experimentalists seeking to expand their knowledge by sharing advanced SEO know-how, and finding innovative ways to get results. Their tactics and techniques are all made available from a central resource and, if you are a webmaster with experience, you may be interested in applying these to your website, or simply learning from others. If nothing else, browsing the blue hat archive will allow you to see the enormous range of issues up for discussion and the tools that can be applied to websites in order to improve ranking and performance in the marketplace.

You may not have personal expertise in SEO, but you can see that you need to review your strategy so that your business gets the best out of its online presence. At Click Consult, one of Europe’s leading internet marketing companies, we offer comprehensive search engine optimisation services to transform your website’s page rankings.

Press Releases Should Entice

Susie — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:00:28 +0000

A lot of companies treat their press releases as yet another way to distribute their marketing message. The tone of the piece, the graphics and even the design all look much the same as any other piece of marketing material. This ignores the form of the online press release and completely misses out on the possibilities offered by online press releases.

Part of the advantage you should gain from using an online press release as part of your marketing plan is that you generate news. People tend to read press releases in much the same way as they read online articles. A well-written online press release will generate buzz about your business, event or product. A ham-handedly written press release will, on the other hand, be completely passed by.

Your company’s press releases need to be written much like a news story, and you can discuss this with our internet marketing experts at Click Consult. Although many people aren’t aware of it, news stories and marketing content aren’t really that much different. Both always have something to sell. Both try to entice the reader to perform an action or accept a message. News stories achieve this by creating excitement about the object of the news, and a press release should do this as well.

When it comes to press releases, the marketing message has to be sold though the news medium. Find the interesting angle to your story, and entice the reader in. Only by creating buzz will your press release achieve its goals.

Using Ad Group Separation To Identify Your Target Audience

Laura — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 11:00:21 +0000

Although you’ll never get relevant PPC traffic from all your keywords there will be times when a broader keyword surprises by converting. This can happen when the keyword is matched to a site holding an audience that doesn’t exactly fit your normal profile but still returns you some excellent results.

An example of this would be if your business was a fashion design school and you were using keywords such as ‘fashion designing’ and ‘fashion design’ in the ad groups. These are likely to show your ad on fashion advice websites, fashion design game sites, and anything else related to fashion design and fashion. These may or may not convert well for your ad but its still worth introducing these types of keyword to your pay per click campaigns as the audiences on these sites may prove to be a suitable audience in the long term. By testing these keywords you can inadvertently discover new target audiences that respond well to your ads.

It is also a good idea to separate the above types of keywords from others, such as ‘fashion design college’ and ‘fashion design school’, as Google recognises them as different things and they will attract different sites.

There have been some new options for predetermined audience targeting, which are available for some PPC advertisers now. These help you to target specifically the audience you seek rather than relying on a complicated algorithm to match keywords to sites with relevant content.

At Click Consult we have an expert team who can help you to develop winning PPC campaigns.

Search Engine Marketing – A Numbers Matter

Dan — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 07:00:02 +0000

It isn’t enough to launch an internet marketing campaign then sit back and wait for the customers to roll in. The internet marketer has to carefully watch their campaigns to ensure they’re winning customers, rather than losing cash. Here are four basic figures you should watch on a daily basis.

* Your average position in the search engine rankings: if your site isn’t in the top ten search results for your keywords, it’s time to have a think about either your keyword choices, or your campaign budget.

* If you’re paying for prominent adverts on a page, you should be seeing a healthy click-through rate. If you fail to get beyond 5%, then you need to look seriously at your advertising copy, the offer you’re presenting, or even your domain name. Less than 5% means that these are out of sync with your keywords.

* Look closely at the cost of your keywords, and the conversion rate you get from them. You should be able to weed out any keywords that are costing you money. High volume keywords come at a high cost, if you make the mistake of choosing high volume keywords that don’t relate directly to your campaign, they’ll cost you even more.

* How many visitors convert to buyers? How many visitors complete a contact form? You should monitor closely the number of visitors that convert to confirmed contacts and sale.

At Click Consult we can help ensure that the numbers make sense, and that your web marketing campaign represents a worthwhile investment.

Maximising Site Relevancy

Alan — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:00:56 +0000

The game of reducing your Google content network costs, whilst maximising relevancy can be one of highs and lows. There are definite trade-offs. There are times when lack of relevancy is worth it for the wider exposure it provides. Google is doing a great deal to ensure relevancy but in the meantime, as a PPC advertiser there are many things you can put into place to minimise any unpleasant surprises.

Use ad groups like keywords when targeting contextually

Google often recommends using many small, tightly-themed ad groups to increase the level of relevancy when site matching. This best practice has other benefits, and currently there is no means to get data for the content network at the level of keyword.

Use multiple ad groups

If you set up multiple ad groups using well-related keywords, they will function within pay per click accounts in the same way a keyword would. This will allow you to pause the ad groups and amend the bid on a more detailed level than when using large ad groups. This is handy when you are working to reduce expenditure on ad groups or keywords that match poorly on a contextual level, or with those that have an undesirable CPL. In a larger ad group you will struggle to isolate the keywords that are matching the ads to irrelevant sites and this can make managing budgets very difficult.

At Click Consult we are experts in PPC campaigning and can help you to develop profitable accounts to get the most out of your budgets.

More Ways To Use Facebook With PPC

Laura — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:00:56 +0000

Facebook continues to grow in popularity and this captive audience can prove to be a great way to advertise for PPC managers. Here are more ways you can use Facebook effectively to convert these potential customers:

Identify new ways to target Facebook users

Facebook allows you to target users via a variety of means. You can target people by age, location or according to other criteria such as qualifications. You can also advertise specifically at single people, based on certain interests or job role. This allows you to target very specifically.

Decide what your key goals are

Make a decision about the main purpose of your pay per click advertising. Is it to raise awareness of your brand or to stimulate new sales or leads? If it’s a brand awareness exercise then focus on cost per impression advertising. If you are looking to make leads or sales then the cost per click is the best option.

Use the bid estimator in Facebook

If you are unsure as to the bid amount you should use to provide your ad with a decent level of exposure then use the bid estimator on Facebook. As you create the ad you can enter the target criteria and follow the steps through. With the information entered you the bid estimator will provide information on a variety of bids that have been placed against ads similar to your ad.

At Click Consult we can work with you to identify new ways to maximise your pay per click advertising.