B2B Marketing Promotions

An affordable SEO services firm is tough to find, especially when you are new to online marketing.  When you first get into web commerce and Internet marketing,  you’ll start hearing a flurry of terms, like “organic search engine optimization” and “paid search engine listings.” What do they mean? Are they the same thing? Is this something I should be doing myself, or do I need to find an SEO firm?

Search engine optimization is one of those “so easy a caveman can do it” areas that people often end up neglecting it, or worse, not understanding it completely. That’s when it may be important to call in an SEO firm to pick up that part of the program for you, because, let’s face it, it’s really not that easy. But if you work at it, and spend a lot of time doing it, you can actually do your own search engine optimization. However, it can be rather time consuming to do properly, so if you have a large site or a new campaign, find an affordable SEO services firm to handle the heavy lifting for you.

There are a few major differences between organic search engine optimization and things like Google Adwords – paid search engine listings – which are a different beast altogether. Make sure you find an affordable SEO services firm that knows the difference.

The first place you’ll see the difference between organic SEO and paid ads is on Google’s search results page. Type in a search term, and see what comes up. You’ll see two sets of results, one on the left, the other on the right. The results on the left are based on organic search, while the results on the right are the sponsored links, or paid ads. According to some search marketing experts, organic search results make up almost 90% of total search results; the remainder are the paid search engine listings.

Second, the organic search results are improved by adding backlinks to a website, using keywords in an article and in anchor text, and using other proper SEO techniques. An SEO services firm is going to be able to show you the best way to accomplish either or both of these.

Third, paid search engine listings can let you “own” more keywords than organic SEO. With paid listings, you’re limited only by your budget — you can own thousands or even tens of thousands of keywords. With organic SEO, you’re limited only by your time, which means you will typically only be able to own tens, or possibly a couple hundred, keywords. An affordable SEO services firm will be able to handle either of these for you.

Fourth, while all search is trackable and measurable, paid search engine listings are more measurable than organic. For one thing, you can measure actual conversions and sales with your keywords, rather than just clicks and eyeballs. This will also speed up the research time in finding which are the best keywords to use for your organic search. By seeing which keywords have the most clickthroughs and conversions, you can see what the most important search terms should be for your organic search. Talk to an affordable SEO services firm about how they can help you.

An Affordable SEO Services Firm is tough to find, especially when you are new to online marketing. When you first get into web commerce and Internet marketing, you’ll start hearing a flurry of terms, like “organic search engine optimization” and “paid search engine listings.” What do they mean? Are they the same thing? Is this something I should be doing myself, or do I need to find an affordable SEO services firm?

Search engine optimization is one of those “so easy a caveman can do it” areas that people often end up neglecting it, or worse, not understanding it completely. That’s when it may be important to call in an SEO firm to pick up that part of the program for you, because, let’s face it, it’s really not that easy. But if you work at it, and spend a lot of time doing it, you can actually do your own search engine optimization. However, it can be rather time consuming to do properly, so if you have a large site or a new campaign, find an affordable SEO services firm to handle the heavy lifting for you.

There are a few major differences between organic search engine optimization and things like Google Adwords – paid search engine listings – which are a different beast altogether. So you need to make sure you find an affordable SEO services firm that understands that difference.

The first place you’ll see the difference between organic SEO and paid ads is on Google’s search results page. Type in a search term, and see what comes up. You’ll see two sets of results, one on the left, the other on the right. The results on the left are based on organic search, while the results on the right are the sponsored links, or paid ads. According to some search marketing experts, organic search results make up almost 90% of total search results; the remainder are the paid search engine listings.

Second, the organic search results are improved by adding backlinks to a website, using keywords in an article and in anchor text, and using other proper SEO techniques. On the other hand, paid search engine listings only require some keyword research and a willingness to pay more money than your competitor to have your paid results appear higher. An affordable SEO services firm is going to be able to show you the best way to accomplish either or both of these.

To the purist and the social media expert, the organic search is going to produce more honest, trsutworthy, and therefore, more-likely-to-be-clicked results that will lead to better search engine performance. However, the affordable SEO services firm will recognize that paid search engine listings are also an important of any effective search engine strategy, and will work with you to make it as successful as possible.

Third, paid search engine listings can let you “own” more keywords than organic SEO. With paid listings, you’re limited only by your budget — you can own thousands or even tens of thousands of keywords. With organic SEO, you’re limited only by your time, which means you will typically only be able to own tens, or possibly a couple hundred, keywords. And you’ll spend a lot of time trying to own them all, which means you’ll miss out on a lot of other work you could be doing for your business. Of course, an affordable SEO services firm will be able to take the time issue off your plate, which means you will be able to focus on the other aspects of your business. They’ll also be able to help you find and claim the best keywords for a paid listing campaign.

Fourth, while all search is trackable and measurable, paid search engine listings are more measurable than organic. For one thing, you can measure actual conversions and sales with your keywords, rather than just clicks and eyeballs. This will also speed up the research time in finding which are the best keywords to use for your organic search. By seeing which keywords have the most clickthroughs and conversions, you can see what the most important search terms should be for your organic search. You can do all these things with organic search too, but the paid search engine listings lets you get that laser-like focus, and to do it much more quickly. Talk to an affordable SEO services firm about how they can help you.

When you say promotional marketing, most people just think “marketing,” especially the non-marketing types. As if what we do is nothing but contests, coupons, and giving out free samples. While that is a part of marketing, promotional marketing is only one small fraction of the big umbrella that makes up Marketing (with a capital M).

Promotional marketing is the idea of promoting your product or service by attracting attention to potential customers. You see this quite a bit in places like grocery stores. The next time you’re walking through your grocery store, count how many promotional marketing items you see: coupons to try a new brand of breakfast cereal, or the free samples of a new food item.

Car dealers and timeshare companies are also big fans of promotional marketing. How many “game cards” have you received from a local car dealer where you would win a prize if it showed up under the silver scratch-off discs.

But there’s more to promotional marketing than just coupons and free items. Contests are another popular method of marketing promotions. Whether it’s a bank giving you 30 seconds in a giant box filled with money and a large fan, letting you grab as many of the fluttering bills as you can, or it’s a golf tournament that will give you a free car if you hit a hole in one on the 14th hole, contests are another great way to bring in potential new customers.

The most famous promotional marketing contest is the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, where you could win $1 million or more, as well as subscribe to different magazines. We went nuts for these when we were kids, begging our parents to please please enter, because we could win a million dollars!

The reason people respond to these promotional marketing campaigns is they’re attracted to the large cash and prize giveaways. Sure, in our heads we know that the odds of winning are higher than the odds of being struck by lightning, but in our hearts, we hope we’ll beat the odds just that one time.

Of course, promotional marketing experts are worried about the one person who does beat the odds, so promotional risk coverage is available for those promotional marketing campaigns that offer large prizes and cash to winners.

If you want to create a powerful promotional marketing campaign, there are a few things you need to keep in mind.

• Why are you holding the promotional marketing campaign in the first place? Is it to sell more product, collect names for your customer mailing list, or just to increase brand awareness?
• How will you measure success? Through increased sales, a bigger customer list, or based on the number of promotional marketing items you gave away? We don’t recommend measuring this last item, because measuring the amount of money you spent does not always translate well to the amount of money you’ll make from it. Just ask any auto racing promoter who spent $100,000 and didn’t get a single sale as a result.
• Who is the marketing campaign geared toward? Is the promotional marketing item going to appeal to your target audience? If you’re trying to reach young men between 18 – 34, a contest that has tickets to a football game will draw them in, while two free passes to a day spa will not.
• Are you looking for new customers or trying to reach existing ones? The kinds of promotional marketing items you give away will attract one group or another.
• Are you compliant with the state and federal laws? Do you have promotional risk coverage in case someone wins bigger than you thought they would? (Imagine how the car dealer must feel when someone hits that hole-in-one and wins a car he wasn’t expecting to give away.) There are a lot of laws surrounding promotional marketing campaigns, and you could run afoul of laws without knowing it. Consult with a promotional marketing professional to make sure you run a clean campaign that doesn’t get you into trouble down the road.

Digital promotions are a great, low-cost way for marketers to promote their products, and increase brand awareness by offering Freemiums to consumers. These incentive promotions can reward people for buying the product (“buy 9 coffee drinks, get your 10th one for free”), can introduce your product to customers (“download a free track from our new album to see if you like it”), or can even allow you to promote your product to others by giving it away for free (“get free skins for the upcoming Watchmen movie for your iPhone and iPod Touch”).

Digital promotions can take a number of different forms, whether it’s an online gift certificate to your customers’ favorite online or brick-and-mortar retailers, free music downloads from iTunes, or even a real plastic gift card to an online store.

The cost of digital promotions is much lower than the other promotional incentives, because your cost is basically the value of the item you’re giving. If you give $10 online gift cards, your cost is $10 per card. This is a welcome change to promotional incentives professionals who would have normally spent a lot of money on graphic design, production and printing, and mailing and distribution.

Whatever form your digital promotions take, it’s an effective way to increase awareness for your brand, and track sales as well. With digital promotions like an online gift card, you can track who received your card, when they redeemed it, what product they were interested in (useful if you’re giving away several different kinds of music), and even if they purchased the actual product you were selling.

Do you have users who only redeem your digital promotions, but don’t actually buy anything? You can drop them from your incentive promotions campaign, and find a new batch of potential customers. Then start tracking and dropping until you’re only giving your digital incentives to a group of people with a high purchase percentage.

So how can you use digital promotions to gather valuable data about your customers? Not only are you able to track individual customers, but you can ask them for additional information like a working email address (you have to email them the digital promotions cards, right?), what products and brands do they usually buy, and what kinds of products they use.

For example, a music producer has several artists on his record label. He uses a digital promotions campaign to promote each of his artists, and offers a free track from any of his artists. For a user to take advantage of these digital incentives, she has to fill out a survey that tells the producer what kind of music she likes, how much she spends on music, and where she usually purchases it.

The producer can then aggregate the data from these digital promotions and see that most of his customers are between 18 – 24, like R&B, and purchase their music on iTunes. Now, he knows he needs to find more R&B artists, and promote them on iTunes rather than trying to produce and distribute CDs to various music stores around the country. Without using and tracking his digital promotions, he would never have access to this kind of information.

Now let’s take it one step further. Armed with this information, the producer can send out future digital promotions that are individualized to each customer’s tastes and preferences, rather than sending out a bunch of generic information and hoping the customers will take the bait. He can create digital promotions that use variable data to customize the offers, so each customer will see the music that he or she likes, and will receive offers that are more likely to be accepted by them.

Let’s recap: if done correctly, digital promotions can be a great way to market your product for a lower price than regular promotional incentives, to track customer responses, and to customize further digital incentives, to increase response and purchase rates.