Posted by Ben Jones on May 8, 2008
Clate Mask wrote an incredible article over at Small Business Trends earlier this week and I thought that a few points he made would be very helpful to our audience here at Ben Means Business. Clate used the example of the “on again, off again” couple (I know a few who still can’t let go of each other.lol) to show how most small business owners approach marketing. The meaning of this metaphor is that when sales are down we feel that we must go out and do things to increase them; and when sales are up, we don’t market at all. Then this cycle just continues over and over again. Sound familiar?………..Yup, it did to me too!
The Lesson for Small Business Marketers
I loved the authors overall point of this article and there were a lot of points in it that really hit home with me (its a shame b/c its a pretty short article. lol); but there was one point that I think really said a lot about marketing and I wanted to share it with you as food for thought. This point was listed as one of three small business marketing truths and it read as follows:
“You are a marketer of information about the problems your product or service solves. You’re not a marketer of product x or service y. “
This statement was so important because it let’s us know that not only are some of us not consistent enough with our marketing, most of us are marketing the wrong thing. This caused some intense thought and what I realized is that all of the most successful products or services solve a popular problem. The first thing that you think of when you picture those products is the problem that they solve or need that they address. We buy most of these products because we want them and not necessarily because need them. So the fact that we still think of them as a solution is due to excellent marketing.
How this applies to your Business
Sometimes we attempt to sell our product or service on the strength of it’s price or individuality because we are trying to seperate ourselves from the pack and that’s fine. However, we must not forget to address the problem. The truth of the matter is that people spend money on things that address their needs(or at least claim to). For instance, even if you have the cheapest toothpaste, but you don’t market the fact that it cleans well, no one will buy it. Most people will write it off as a “cheap knock-off” and then go buy some Crest or Colgate.
So the point here is that no matter what advantages you identify for your product(price, health benefit, etc..), your primary marketing goal should be to show your customers that your product or service addresses their needs. Once you get their attention, you can reel them in with your other strengths.
Small Business Marketing Secret: Keep the main thing the main thing.
What valuable information can you draw from Clate’s statement? Anything you want to add to my point? Leave me a comment…Let’s discuss it
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Posted by Ben Jones on May 10, 2007
Advertising with Google Adwords can be one of the more rewarding methods of advertisement for any campaign. However, using Adwords takes some knowledge and can become very expensive if the correct techniques are not applied. So I’ve created this 5-tip manual as the completion to the few Adwords tips I have been giving out in the past. This manual should help the novice or more experienced Pay Per Click marketer take their Adwords campaigns to the next level.
My initial experience with Google Adwords was not a very good one. I made every mistake possible with my campaign. I simply found out which keywords were most popular and I tried to bid whatever dollar amount necessary to get me into the top spots in search results. Well, needless to say, that method costed me a lot of money and I never got enough clicks because my budget would not allow me to get a high number of clicks at the amount I was paying per click.
After a few weeks of attempting to make this method work, I decided to give up. I knew that I needed traffic to my site but realized that I didn’t have the budget to keep paying high prices for it. So I began to learn everything I could about Adwords and how people utilize it. I read books, blogs, anything I could to get information that would help me to create a successful ad campaign. I the constructed my new campaign using a few simple methods that proved to be priceless. So, lets get right to them.
Method 1: Evening the Playing Field
This first method is one that I have given before. I like to call it “Evening the Playing Field”. This technique is fairly simple and will save you tons of money. The purpose of this technique is to avoid the expensive price of the more popular, broader keywords. So the idea is to find a bunch of slightly less popular keywords that will cost you less per click.
One way that we can do this is to utilize the names of industry competitors as keywords and allow your ads to be seen when someone searches for that company. This method works very well because you are stealing customers from your competitors and you will be paying a lot less money per click because the companies name will not be as popular as a traditional keyword.
Example:
I own an bookstore in North Carolina and want to use Google Adwords to advertise my website. Instead of paying ($1.50 per click) for keywords like “bookstore, books, etc…” that get 400,000 searches per month, I would bid($0.25 per click) on keywords like “Barnes and Noble, Borders, etc…” that get 20,000 searches per month.
As a result, I place much higher in the search engine results page (SERP) because of less competition for the keyword and will ultimately save tons of money while seeing more traffic.
Method 2: Capitalize on Your CTR
To properly understand this method, you need to understand how Google decides where to place ads in search results. Google uses a ranking formula of Cost-Per-Click x Click Through Rate to determine where ads are placed. So, what this means is that even if you bid $1.25 per click, a low click through rate will cause your ad to get low placement in search results. However, the reverse, which is the basis of this method, is also true.
So how do we use this information to our advantage? Well, what I started doing is setting my maximum CPC higher in the beginning of my campaign so that I can place higher in search pages. Once my CTR has increased from the higher ad placement, I lower my maximum bid and still maintain decent ad placement in the SERP(search engine results page). One other thing that I do when using this method is I capitalize the Title of the ad for the first couple of days. Google prohibits capitalization so they will disable your ad after a couple of days until you change them to lowercase. By this time, the capitalization along with the high ad placement has earned you a high CTR. I don’t recommend using capitalization because it is against Google’s “terms and conditions”, but it is something that I did for a day or so just to boost my CTR.
Method 3: Misspelled Words
A lot of people misspell words when typing their search terms. So it is usually beneficial and a lot less costly to bid on common misspellings of search terms instead of the actual term itself. This method is pretty self explanatory so I will not go into to too much detail. However, I will say that some keywords are misspelled so often that they may be searched for jut as frequently as the correctly spelled term. Be sure to do your research and make sure that you take advantage of these blunders.
Method 4: Turn off Content Matching
I found this trick to be very helpful with my pay per click campaigns. Google’s content matching feature will display your ad for searches that Google deems are “relevant” to your site.The problem is that Google will have a much broader idea of what is relevant because they exist to make money. So your ads end up being displayed for searches that have nothing to do with your site. As a result, your CTR (Click Through Rate) and conversion rates will suffer. (High CTR’s are essential to getting better rankings in search results)Who wants to pay for clicks that they have no chance of converting?….No one! Your conversion and Click Through Rates should increase once you turn this feature off. Then your ad will only be shown when someone searches for your keywords.
So log into your Google Adwords account, put a check next to your campaigns and click the “Edit Settings” button. Once your inside the “Edit Campaigns” screen, you will scroll to the right and uncheck the box next to “Content Network”. Save your settings and watch your ad campaigns soar!
Method 5: Exclude Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are words that you identify that you don’t want your ad to be displayed for in Serp’s. For example, if you are selling basketballs, you don’t want your ad to be displayed when someone searches for “free basketballs”. So, you would add the word “free” to your negative keywords list. This is just another way to make sure that the only people who click your ads are people who are actually interested in what you have to offer. Therefore, you don’t waste money on clicks that you have no possibility to convert.
Bonus Tip: Use Exact or Phrase Matches
Google defaults your ads to “Broad Match”. This means that your ad will be displayed whenever someone searches for anything similar to your keyword. Therefore, you will have a higher probability that someone will click your ad that is not looking for your product. So I recommend that you use the “exact” or “phrase match” feature. To use the “exact match” feature you must place each of your keywords inside a [] symbols when selecting keywords. To use the “phrase match feature, you must place your keywords inside quotation marks.
That’s all the tips for now. I hope that you found something to help your ad campaigns. Don’t forget to subscribe to my feed, bookmark us, and leave your comments.
Posted by Ben Jones on May 9, 2007
I am busy writing a pretty meaty post that I’ll publish tomorrow so I don’t have much to publish today. However, I do have a nice piece of information for you guys. It’s an excellent opportunity to get a build more traffic for your website or blog.
The opportunity is a blogging contest hosted by Darren Rowse at Problogger. The winner gets a prize of $1001. All you have to do is write a post about “Top 5″ whatever. It can be about the “Top 5″ anything(ex:If your site is about radios, you can write a post about the “top 5 brands”).
Everybody who submits a post will get a link on his page so its worth it even if you don’t win. Visit Problogger to see contest details.
Posted by Ben Jones on May 6, 2007
As most of you know, Google’s Page Rank has become extremely important for websites. It basically ranks you on how important/popular your blog is. Advertisers use it to determine whether how much an advertisement on your website is worth. So, I’ve found a pretty cool way to increase your page rank.
Most blogging platforms automatically have “no follow” tags in comments section as a default so that search bots do not use the links from commenters to increase page rank. This helps to discourage people from spamming your blog with comments. Well, there is a movement going on right now where select bloggers have removed the no follow tags from their comments section so that other bloggers get some PR juice when commenting on their blog.
Learn about how this can increase page rank at Paula Neal Mooney’s blog. Also join the “D-List” movement by following the directions below. Remember to visit all the sites listed and leave relevant comments in order to increase you PR!
***Begin to copy here***
1. Write a short paragraph at the beginning of your post and link back to the blog that put you on the list in the paragraph. This isn’t a suggestion. You need to break up the duplicate content. Someone took the time to add you so the least you can do is give them an extra link back.
2. Copy the list of originals below COMPLETELY and add it to your blog. If you would like a different keyword for your blog then change it when you do your post and it should pass to most blogs with that keyword.
3. Take the adds from the blog that added you and place them in the “Originals” list.
4. Add at least 1 new blog that you KNOW us using the DO FOLLOW plugin to the list in the “My Adds” section. (Add no more than 5!) Let the people you’ve added know, so that they can keep the list going!
5. Leave relevant comments on the blogs listed and get a link back to your site thanks to Do Follow!My Adds:
Paula Neal Money
Ugh!!’s Greymatter Honeypot
Original List:
Entrepreneur Guide
Fuzzy Future
Solo Technology
GeekySpeaky
Simple Kind Of Life
3DayMom
BuyMeBlog
The Hockey Dad
Midlife Musings
Utterly Geek
Whatever I Feel Like
My Dandelion Patch
Surviving NJ
BizMark Tech
Two Dog Zoo
TDZ Travel
Body, Mind & Solar
MidLifeMusings
HomeBizBlogger
Confessions of a Housewife
Andy Beard
Randa Clay Design
Posted by Ben Jones on April 29, 2007
I don’t want to overwhelm you guys with backlink offers but I had to introduce you to this one. I suggest everybody with a website take advantage of this. Darin.cc has a blog that reports information on Search Engine Marketing. It is a very informative site. I especially like the two articles on Pay Per Click advertising( Part1 Part2). Those are excellent articles to supplement the two articles that I wrote on the same subject (My PPC-Part1 Part2).
Darin is offering 2 links to your blog if you review his blog and he is throwing in a FREE Platinum IAWMD Membership($75 value)! He will also give you a link on BigTagCloud.Com which is growing pretty quickly. That is pretty good compensation for a short review. So be sure to check it out. The IAWMD membership alone should be well worth it.
Posted by Ben Jones on April 28, 2007
Traffic, Traffic, Traffic! Your site is absolutely ineffective without it. The discussion about how to produce traffic to a website is one of the more overly examined topics on the web. However, it is still the one subject that nobody seems to really know much about. Misinformation is extremely common in the world of SEO.
There are only a few things that we know for sure about SEO. One of the things we do know is that quality backlinks will do a lot for your search engine rankings. Emphasis must be placed on the word “quality”. Backlinks from well-known sites with subjects relative to your site’s will immediately increase your search engine ranking.
HOW TO GET A QUALITY BACKLINK
On the other hand, your site could actually be penalized for backlinks from irrelevant, worthless websites. It’s a very touchy system. With that said, one of the blogs that I frequent is offering a backlink to any site that will review it. It is a pretty popular blog (Technorati top 14,268), so a backlink from this site could be beneficial to you if your site’s topic relates to e-commerce, e-marketing, e-(you get the point)
.
This blog is full of good information which is why I keep it on my reader. It is supposedly written by a “13-year old” so the grammar is sometimes incorrect but the content is always valuable. My point is that if you need backlinks you may want to do a small review post just to get a backlink from a popular site. Visit his blog to see how even a 13-year old can make money online.
Posted by Ben Jones on April 26, 2007
When it comes to SEO, I always hear people talk about the importance of
backlinks, meta tags, and age of url. While I do believe that all of these things are important, I can’t help but recognize that all of my search engine clicks have come from words within my content.
MY EXPERIENCE WITH SEO
This leads me to believe that once your site is indexed, search engines place a lot of weight on the actual content of your site. I do not have many backlinks to my site yet, but everyday people have found me through a Google search term that matches something listed in one of my articles.
Which would mean that your site could get a lot of traffic if you strategically listed keywords in your content. I was under the impression that this would not happen until I had built this expansive network of backlinks from well-known sites. Well, it appears that this may not be necessarily true.
I’M DOING AN EXPERIMENT
I am starting to see more and more bloggers/webmasters that won’t do link exchanges but will do content exchanges. Has content become more powerful in the world of SEO? I don’t know, but I have decided to do a little experiment.
I have selected a keyword that I am not currently ranked for(entrepreneur guide) and I will attempt to climb up the rankings by listing that phrase in the title, content, and signature of every post for the next month. I will chart my results to see if my rankings have improved and how much they have improved.
After I have those results I wll consider doing an experiment using just backlinks so that I can compare the effect that each factor has on page rankings. The results of this experiment may be helpful to us all. It may tell us that focusing our energies on content is the best thing that we can do as far as optimization.
But hey, lets just see, shall we? Check back often, I will be charting my results weekly.
Keyword: entrepreneur guide
Posted by Ben Jones on April 23, 2007
Ok..I’ve been out of town for a few days but now I’m back and eager to get back to blogging. So, I will continue with the Pay Per Click tips.
TODAY’S TIP: TURN OFF “CONTENT MATCHING” FEATURE.
WHAT IS CONTENT MATCHING?
I found this trick to be very helpful with my pay per click campaigns. Google’s content matching feature will display your ad for searches that Google deems are “relevant” to your site.
The problem is that Google will have a much broader idea of what is relevant because they exist to make money. So your ads end up being displayed for searches that have nothing to do with your site. As a result, your CTR (Click Through Rate) and conversion rates will suffer. (High CTR’s are essential to getting better rankings in search results)
Who wants to pay for clicks that they have no chance of converting?….No one! Your conversion and Click Through Rates should increase once you turn this feature off. Then your ad will only be shown when someone searches for your keywords.
HOW TO TURN IT OFF
So log into your Google Adwords account, put a check next to your campaigns and click the “Edit Settings” button. Once your inside the “Edit Campaigns” screen, you will scroll to the right and uncheck the box next to “Content Network”. Save your settings and watch your ad campaigns soar!
Posted by Ben Jones on April 18, 2007
The Internet is one the more efficient ways to advertise your business. You will be hard pressed to find any viable company today that does not have a website. However, in order to fully access the power of the Internet, your website must be properly advertised. One of the best ways to see an immediate increase in traffic is through Pay Per Click advertising with search engines such as Google.
What is Pay Per Click?
Pay Per Click advertising gets your ads listed in search results for your selected keywords. Therefore, your ad only appears when someone is looking for your product/service and you will only be charged when someone actually clicks your ad.
The tough part about search engine marketing is getting your ads to the top of searches with as low of cost as possible. This can be very tricky. The formula that search engines use to decide where ads place in results vary from search engine to search engine. Nonetheless, most fundamental advertising techniques will usually help to ensure that you get the most visitors for your money regardless of search engine.
The Method
The technique we will discuss today is fairly simple and will save you tons of money. The purpose of this technique is to avoid the expensive price of the more popular, broader keywords. So what you want to do is find a bunch of slightly less popular keywords that will cost you less per click.
One way that we can do this is to utilize the names of industry competitors as keywords and allow your ads to be seen when someone searches for that company. This method works very well because you are stealing customers from your competitors and you will be paying a lot less money per click because the companies name will not be as popular as a traditional keyword.
Example:
I own an bookstore in North Carolina and want to use Google Adwords to advertise my website. Instead of paying ($1.50 per click) for keywords like “bookstore, books, etc…” that get 400,000 searches per month, I would bid($0.25 per click) on keywords like “Barnes and Noble, Borders, etc…” that get 20,000 searches per month.
As a reult, I place much higher in the search engine results page (SERP) because of less competition for the keyword and will ultimately save tons of money while seeing more traffic. Makes perfect sense to me… More AdWords tips to come.
Posted by Ben Jones on April 13, 2007
There is one thing that will absolutely kill the growth of most
businesses at one point or another. Although it is intended to
make sure that you are properly prepared for the journey ahead, it
often stunts the growth of your business.
The funny thing about this is that every business class I’ve ever
taken during my coursework absolutely glorifies the importance of
this one factor. The factor that I am speaking of is “planning”.
Although, a theoretically sound plan is helpful in attaining your
business goals, it’s frequently a stumbling block for growth. Why? You
ask….
THE EXPLANATION
Well,it’s simple. Often times business owners and entrepreneurs
will spend the majority of their time preparing and not enough of
time actually implementing. We usually use planning time as a
cover for procrastination, which we all know will cause failure.
If a cook spends most of his time planning the meal and not much
time cooking, there would be a disaster on every plate (not to
mention a plethora of food borne illnesses:)). This is the disaster
that a lot of entrepreneurs create within their businesses.
We often over analyze, over plan, overreact, over…you get the
point. We, as entrepreneurs, have to learn to K.i.s.s.(Keep It
Super Simple) our business. This way you will not waste countless
hours planning to avoid some imaginary disaster; or perfecting a
secondary function while neglecting a primary one.
WHAT YOU SHOULD BE DOING
Spend your time producing the basic functions of your business.
These are the functions that are essential for growth. If you are
a blogger…write posts. You can work on templates later. If you
are a speaker…better your speech. Don’t waste time becoming
familiar with the audio system.
If you concentrate on your primary functions, your business will
naturally develop some “icing” as it grows. But if you don’t do
this, years will have gone by and you will still be “getting ready”
for action.
Many millionaires state that their successes in life did not
necessarily come from there most meticulously planned actions.
Nothing you plan will turn out exactly as you plan it
anyway. Success usually comes from taking actions toward a goal
and adjusting to obstacles as they come.
CLARIFICATION
Now I’m not saying you should just make thoughtless, uninformed
business decisions. But I am saying that, during the growth
stages, you should ensure that your time is being spent taking
actions that directly effect your primary functions.
Because Scrutinization breeds Procrastination and Action breeds
Growth. I will be discussing the difference between proactive
action and progressive actions in a future posts. Leave your
comments…
