September 14th, 2009
On September 24, 2009, Dennis Yu, CEO of BlitzLocal and a recognized thought-leader in the fast-moving world of Pay Per Click marketing, will be speaking at the PPC Summit in Los Angeles, California (Sept 23-24, 2009) on Local and International PPC Opportunities.
Dennis will provide the same workshop at the PPC Summit in Chicago, Illinois (Nov 4-5, 2009).
Dennis’s Workshop will focus on answering the following important questions:
- Local search is attracting a great deal of press for its ability to provide targeted leads for smaller businesses, but is it right for you?
- What local opportunities are out there?
- Where should you focus your money and attention?
- If you can see the world locally, can you also see it globally?
- Do you see international opportunities for your business in this global search marketing economy?
The workshop will delve into opportunities that will drive your business forward, both near and far.
Tags: events, local search marketing, PPC, press release, speaking
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September 3rd, 2009
On October 14, 2009 at 12:00pm CDT Dennis Yu, CEO of BlitzLocal.com, will give a webinar presented by the American Marketing Association and ReadyTalk on Facebook Marketing Tactics: How to Monetize Your Brand Through Facebook.
The webinar will focus on answering the following questions:
- How do you port your traditional search campaigns and make them social?
- How do you take advantage of the viral loop?
- How does user targeting differ from keyword targeting?
- What are best practices in creative management that will increase your CTR and avoid wasting lots of money?
- How do you track performance and conversions in tandem with traditional search?
- How can you multiply performance by tying in Facebook pages for your brand and build up a fan base?
Dennis Yu is CEO of BlitzLocal.com, a 50 person agency based in Westminster, Colorado, specializing in local lead gen, integrating Facebook advertising with social media marketing, pay-per-click advertising, directory listings, web analytics, and call tracking. Clients include Quiznos, Equifax, AmazingMail and other national retail and franchised outlets. A 14 year veteran of online marketing with Yahoo! and American Airlines, Dennis is an acknowledged thought leader in search, affiliate, and internet marketing. He has spoken at conferences around the world, including Singapore, Australia, and the US.
To sign up for the free Webinar visit: https://cc.readytalk.com/r/6sg7k5akaeos
Tags: events, facebook advertising, press release, webinar
Posted in Company Blog | 1 Comment »
August 26th, 2009
I spent some time using Google Trends today. Google Trends is a tool Google created to measure traffic for terms and websites. For example, one can compare search terms such as “mountain bikes” vs. “road bikes”. Here are the results:
Mountain Bikes (Blue) vs. Road Bikes (Red)
As you can see the results are divided between search volume and news reference. The “A”, “B” etc. in the Search Volume index refer to cited news articles over the years in case you had in interest. These citations would be of a higher interest to something with a dramatic progression and decline, like the stock market.
As interesting as road and mountain bike publicity are, the publicity for search engines and social networking have officially met. Yahoo’s search engine and the social networking site Facebook have shaken hands. Here’s the evidence:
Not only have they shook hands, but Facebook has said goodbye and has continued to exceed Yahoo’s traffic. This information is breakthrough, it marks a new age in internet marketing. The primary heat is being taken off of search engines and placed more avidly on social media and networking websites.
Assuming that social networking is the next best things for internet marketing, in which basket should we place our eggs? Some of the top social networking sites include Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Hi5, and Bebo. Let’s go ahead and compare the trends. Here are the results:
Current Results:
1. Facebook.com
2. Myspace.com
3. Hi5.com
4. Bebo.com
5. Twitter.com
As we can see Myspace was a leader in the past, but has been exceeded by Facebook in the past year. Twitter is small but is growing, along with Bebo and Hi5. Checking trends of the social media hotspots pertains to directing traffic, and finding the popular place to do so is all part of the greater picture in online marketing. Please refer to Online Marketing the Easy and Hassle-Free Way to understand how we relate information like this into our business. It will be interesting to compare these results in another quarter or two, and what we at BlitzLocal can do with information provided.
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August 22nd, 2009
Here at BlitzLocal we implement many different tools to bring our clients the most business via the internet as possible. Among other tools, we customize Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns to better suit our client needs. Many advertisers will reference PPC as common knowledge, but if the client is unfamiliar there’s no reason to let it slide. I will be covering PPC basics so that there is no guessing involved, and we can all feel a little more informed.
First allow me to define some common terms heard in Pay Per Click.
Pay Per Click (PPC) – Advertisers pay a provider for certain keywords when their ad is clicked.
Cost Per Click (CPC) – The amount advertisers pay for each to bring one visitor to a website.
Keyword – A specific term that is searched on the internet. For example, a dentist would pay for the keyword “root canal”.
Bidding - Advertisers competitively bid on certain keywords relevant to their target market to advantage the client .
How to build a PPC campaign
Here is a basic example of how to build a PPC campaign. For this example I will use a local Denver Cosmetic Surgeon.
First, we need to determine who the target market is. Using the cosmetic surgeon example, people searching for cosmetic surgery will be our target market.
Second, we create subcategories of our parent category. A Cosmetic Surgeon can do a number of procedures, the procedures we want to target for more business. Some subcategories for a Cosmetic Surgeon would be Botox, Laser Hair Removal, Face Lifts, Breast Augmentation, and Chemical Peels.
Finally, given all subcategories we can create keywords. Keywords are specific to each subcategory. Some keywords for the subcategory Botox may be “botox procedure”, “facial botox”, “botox doctor”.
When we are done building our keywords for the PPC campaign, the end product will look like this.
Parent Category: Cosmetic Surgery > Subcategory: Botox > Keyword: botox procedure
Parent Category: Cosmetic Surgery > Subcategory: Botox > Keyword: facial botox
Parent Category: Cosmetic Surgery > Subcategory: Botox > Keyword: botox doctor
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PPC Example
After our keywords are built we create optimized, eye-catching ads and place them in their proper place.
Pay Per Click and Cost Per Click
Pay Per Click refers to paying a PPC provider such as Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter for certain keywords. Obviously PPC campaigns are not free, so we must optimize spending to create the most efficiency when it comes to bringing in new visitors. Bidding on keywords measures the greatest efficiency. Weed out the bad keywords and invest in the ones producing results. When it comes to bidding there are plenty of options, but an Analyst report stats and give you need-to-know information.
Thank you for reading the basics of Pay Per Click on the BlitzLocal blog. If this has interested you please look forward to a 12 Week Series on PPC coming in September. With Scott Richter’s all around expertise prepare to have your PPC socks knocked off.
Tags: 12 Week Series on PPC, Basics, Bidding, Denver Cosmetic Surgeon, Keyword, Pay Per Click, PPC
Posted in SEO and Marketing | 1 Comment »
August 22nd, 2009
This week SEMPO held a webcast that focused on The Economics of Local Search Advertising. The primary subject matter of the event was a new research report from Borrell Associates that examines the “challenges and opportunities around the $5.3 billion local search advertising industry.” Gordon Borrell led the webcast and gave his personal insights on his firm’s findings.
Below, I’ve included important PowerPoint slides along with some observations from the webcast.
Key Findings:
Interactive media advertising cannot and will not grow forever.
A regular problem with small business is that they don’t want to spend much, have high demands and unfortunately are not very good about paying their bills.
There is currently massive churn in Local Search Advertising. Based off of Borrell’s findings the average situations is that if a Local Search Firm sold 12,000 accounts in a given year they would likely finish the year with 247 total active accounts! Key factors of the high churn rate include: Local Search is oversold. On top of that not enough of the client’s money is going to buying PPC. Finally, dealing with small businesses is proportionately far too time-consuming—they need a lot of hand holding, even on small buys. (See Slide 14)
Typically, the lower the spend the less money is spent on actual keywords buys—a lot of the money goes towards commissions and overhead. (Slide 15)
Firms that use Search Engine Marketing Management Software see lower churn rate. Sophisticated software helps make management of PPC much easier and more consistent. (Slide 16)
There is a direct correlation between the amount spent on ad buys and the amount of churn—the more money spent on ad buys the lower the churn, the more spent on commissions and overhead the higher the churn. (Slide 17)
Studies have shown that actually increasing percentage of spend on ad buys not only delivers better results for the client, but it also delivers higher profits over time for the Local Search Marketing Firm.
Most small advertisers have the nagging feeling that half the advertising they are doing is working and half of it is not, the only trouble is that they’re not sure which half is the one that is working (Borell calls that the John Wannamaker Syndrome). That means that they are vulnerable to being persuaded either towards or away from different types of advertising. At the end of the day, Local Advertising is based off of trust; if you can convince them to trust you they will buy, but your service damn well better perform.
Many local advertisers have not yet tried Local Search Marketing, however many of them are constantly getting contacted by local search advertisers (some times as much as once per week!). That means that perhaps Local Search Advertising Businesses have NOT yet found the right pitch. There is an opportunity for search businesses if they can find a simple pitch that hits the right nerve.
Local Search Advertisers need to understand the sorts of questions their small business clients will have—they’ll want to know how much money will be spent on what, they will want guaranteed results and they will want a monthly report that they can understand (not just a Google Analytics report with a different logo).
A lot of PPC people out there don’t know what they’re doing, so the caveat here is that increasing ad buy spend may not get performance as high as it needs to be. Spending more money inefficiently won’t get you any further. You have to have both—high percentage of overall money going to ad buys and talented people managing the campaigns. Also, talent may not be enough; they need to use sophisticated tools.
This means that the perfect situation is one where you have a high percentage of client spend dedicated to ad buys (60% minimum, and 65% is better!), along with experienced and talented analysts managing these accounts with the help of sophisticated Search Engine Marketing Management Software.
A regular question Borrell gets, given the tremendous amount of churn he talks about, is:
How many times will small businesses fail the first time around, but retry local search at a later date?
His answer: The fact is that there is currently no strongly conclusive data here, but based off of some recent research the belief is that many of them will come back. One of the reasons is that not all churn is due to people being unsatisfied—some people only pursue seasonable campaigns; others have like to run tests and then evaluate the results over a period of time before deciding whether to re-engage.
One last thought from Borrell: Local Advertising is Sold, not Bought—SMBs need to be pursued, and the right pitch along with a tight system that produces results will win them and keep them happy.
Remember: BlitzLocal devotes 70% of the client’s spend towards Ad Buys and we have talented PPC professionals running the campaigns! Use BlitzLocal for a competitive advantage!
Tags: economics of local search, local search marketing, PPC
Posted in BlitzLocal, SEO and Marketing | No Comments »
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