Pay Per Click Marketing Centricity

New Google Trends: Can it Help Your Internet Marketing?

I was just scanning my Google Friends Newsletter and found an interesting new tool in Google Labs. Google Trends allows you to see "what the world is searching for" on Google. Actually, the tool shows you not only what the world is looking for, but also allows you to drill-down further and see what a country or in some cases, even a city is searching for. For business owners, especially those with an on-line presence, the best feature is the ability to compare up to five words or phrases to see which ones are searched for most often on Google.

Let's use a simple Google Trend example from my wife's favorite show - American Idol. The chart in this example shows some interesting information from the contest in 2005. First, you'll note that the search volume in the United States was fairly similar for both Carrie and Bo through the 3rd quarter of 2005 - with Carrie holding a slight lead. You'll note a huge peak in search volume for both contestants in the middle of the 2nd quarter when the 2005 finals of American Idol took place.

After the finals, when they toured with all the American Idol finalists, the search volume was fairly close with Carrie holding a slight edge. At the beginning of 3rd quarter, however, the search volume for Carrie Underwood increased significantly and Bo's search volume stayed relatively flat. I'm no Idol expert, but my guess is 3rd quarter is when Carrie released her CD.

Another interesting element you'll find with the Google Trends chart is the search volume by cities. This chart shows the top ten cities by search volume. The largest search volume for the top three cities came from Leeds, AL, Birmingham, AL, and Huntsville, AL. In these three cities, Bo Bice's name was searched for two to three times as often as Carrie Underwood. Why? Because Bo is from Alabama!

In the next seven cities listed, Carrie had search volume at least twice that of Bo. This was probably a good indicator of why she won the contest.

Google Trends is still in beta and provides limited functionality. However, this new tool provides data that is not available anywhere else - real search data trends from Google. Since Google represents over 42% of total search engine volume, it may be worth your time to experiment with the tool for keywords and search terms potential customers use to learn about your products or services or find your business on-line.

I'll discuss how you can use Google Trends to improve your business in my next post...

Google Search Help

If you are frequent user of Google, here's a resource you should check out. GoogleGuide provides a nice tutorial and in-depth explanations of the features and services of Google. I've used Google Search multiple times a day for over six years. Yet, I still learned quite a few new features and shortcuts that will save me time in future searches.

Branding Simplicity - How a Simple Brand can Lead to Success

                Two Men and a Truck

In today's business environment, I think a simple, straightforward brand can more effectively differentiate you and your company than fancy, complex branding attempts. Sometimes, businesses and especially marketing agencies, let their creativity get in the way of their branding. Two Men and a Truck obviously has not fallen into this trap!

Two Men and a Truck is a great example of how to create a very effective, yet simple, brand. It's a neat story if you're not familiar with the company.

Two Men and a Truck is a local moving franchise that started out as two high school boys who used a pick- up truck to move people's stuff and make extra money after school. The "stick men" logo was developed by the boys mom, who officially formed the company and serves as the CEO.

The name of the company is obviously very straightforward. The tag line "Movers Who Care" is simple, but sends an effective message that addresses one of the main concerns you have when hiring a moving company -  will these guys damage our belongings or our new house while moving?"

All of the company's trucks are white and include the simple "stick men" logo and tag line - all in black lettering. This set of elements is repeated on all four sides of the truck so they can be seen by passers-by from any direction.

Two Men and a Truck has grown from one moving truck to over 1,100 trucks in the past twenty years. Not bad for a "simple" brand.

Perhaps noticing the success of "Two Men and a Truck," this week while taking my boys to school, I was passed by a small pick-up truck with two ladies inside. They had a white, square, magnetic sign on the driver side door that simply read:

                          Two Ladies and a Bucket

It appears these two ladies have taken note of the success of a simple brand as well!

Email Marketing: How to Improve Your Email Marketing Results

According to Jupiter Research, the average B2B email delivery rate, excluding bounces, is 89%. MarketingSherpa's "Email Marketing Metrics Guide" estimates that 14% of B2B email is bounced. By combining these numbers, then, we can estimate that 25% of B2B marketing emails never reach your intended recipients. So, how can you improve your deliverability and overall email marketing results?

1. Always be testing. Continually conduct simple A/B split testing where you send email to two groups with one variable altered in each (e.g. subject line, from, image, day sent, etc. According to Jupiter, marketers that test mailings are more likely to have conversion rates exceeding the industry average of 1% to 2%.
2. Statistical experts claim you want to achieve 30 to 50 responses to have a statistically significant or valid outcome. So, using the subject line as an example, you need the "winning" subject line to prompt at least 30 responses (in this case, opened emails).
3. Two of the most critical elements to test for open rates are the subject and from lines - day and time the email is sent are also significant.
4. Messages that appear with pictures have stronger conversion rates, so testing images and their placement is a good idea. Other personalization features, like naming the prospect in the message also should be considered.
5. Test the frequency of your emails. You want to find a balance that maximizes your ROI. Send to often and your open rates may drop; email too infrequently and you may miss some opportunities.
6. Some other elements you can test include: recipient segmentation, copy length, copy intro, closing copy, copy style, bullets vs. numbering, view above the fold, response buttons, images, colors, pricing, taglines, unsubscribe wording, credibility symbols (e.g. VeriSign, Truste, TrustBuild), refer a friend, customer testimonials, signatures and charts.
7. Be sure to have an abuse@yourcompany.com mailbox to receive feedback from ISPs and take steps to remove bad addresses from your list.
8. Email to everyone on your list at least once every 90 days.
9. Run outbound email through a content-checker to reduce the chance your message gets caught in a spam filters. You can try this one or Google for more options.
10. To ensure your recipients recognize your messages, use your brand in your email "from" field and use the same address consistently.

Small Business Definition: What is a Small Business?

This blog is for small business owners. But what is a small business? I believe if you asked 5 different small business owners this question, you'd probably get at 5 different answers. According to BtoB, the definition of what constitutes a small business varies widely:

• U.S. Small Business Administration: Defined by industry, based on number of employees or annual revenue.
• Visa USA: Fewer than 100 employees, less than $25 million in annual revenue.
• United Parcel Service of America: Between $5 million and $250 million in annual revenue.
• eBay: Fewer than 100 employees.

According to Mediamark Research Inc., there are 13.7 million adults who are small business owners. They define a small business owner as adults 18 years of age or older who own a business with fewer than 99 employees.

New Search Engine for B2B Vertical?

I came across a new search engine called, VerticalSearch, - "the search engine for the b2b community." While Google, Yahoo and MSN currently garner over 90% of the search market, I think we'll start to see more and more vertical and local-specific search engines popping up.

VerticalSearch focuses specifically on the B2B community. From their About Us page:

To begin with, we have indexed over 4,000 of the B2B trade press sites, including many online -only publishers of B2B information. These sites offer a wealth of content and editorial expertise in the whole range of B2B verticals, from Agriculture to Mining, Construction to Transportation. Soon we will be adding tens of thousands of B2B company sites to augment the B2B trade press sites.

You can submit your business site to the VerticalSearch search engine in less than two minutes with an easy online form.

A primary objective of VerticalSearch is to resolve a common frustration B2B information providers encounter-a lack of top rankings in the large, generalized consumer search engine results. My question, though, is will this search engine be successful - even if they address this frustration for B2B information providers?

As small business owners, aren't most of us frustrated with how difficult it is to appear in the national top page rankings for the more popular keywords? Sure. But it's not the content publishers (us) who drive the revenue for the search engines. The business or end consumers who use the search engines to find our products, services or ideas drive the revenue - advertising revenue. And for these folks, it's all about search results relevancy.

For vertical search engines, like VerticalSearch, to be successful, they will have to build a better mousetrap - a search engine that will provide more relevant top 30 results than Google, Yahoo and MSN. That is a tall order.

Today, a quick search for "marketing consultant" on both Google and VerticalSearch shows the search engines are in different leagues right now. Google, for me, is much more relevant.

But it is still early for VerticalSearch. Perhaps they'll significantly improve their algorithms enough that searching through a much smaller web universe will allow them to compete with the big search engines - we'll see.

Should You Create a Blog to Market Your Small Business?

Should you create a blog for your small business? For many small businesses, I think it is absolutely worth the initial small investment of time and money to create a blog to market your small business. Take a look at this article in the San Francisco Chronicle that talks about several small businesses that created a blog with good results.

In addition, I've listed ten reasons you should consider creating a blog for your small business:

Radio Advertising: Radio Announcers are not Marketers

I heard an awful, live radio advertisement/interview while listening to one of the sports radio stations in St. Louis and wanted to share the lesson this poor business owner just learned.

This small business owner has a landscaping business and recently acquired the exclusive license in the area for a golf putting surface that can be put down in your back yard so you can work on your putting stroke without hitting the golf course.

This small business owner paid for a live commercial promotion with the announcers. This type of radio advertising usually comes at a premium price because you're using the on-air radio talent and a greater number of listeners should hear the advertisement because it's number one in the advertising rotation.

Whatever this poor small business owner paid, it was too much.

Marketing Static: What's the Frequency of Your Message?

One of the larger AM Radio stations (watts) in the country, KMOX, is based here in St. Louis. Today, they began broadcasting in HD Radio.

Like many consumers, I've heard a little about HD Radio, but not sure I could provide more than three or four sentences on the technology.

During the lunch hour, I happened to be in my car flipping through the stations and stopped for the news report on KMOX. During the news, KMOX announced their new HD Radio broadcast and conducted a brief interview with one of their in-house technicians.

Let's skip the part why you would interview a technician to inform your audience of this "big deal" and focus on his message. "John, tell us about HD Radio," said the interviewer.

"Well, HD Radio is a new technology that allows us to broadcast the same content we've been broadcasting, but now it's broadcast with a digital signal. It may not sound like a big deal, but it sure is a bid deal to us techies."

Wow, doesn't that make you excited that KMOX is now broadcasting in HD Radio? You may not be too excited because John has told us about a feature. A feature of a new technology that most of us know very little about.

Perhaps we would have been more excited if John described a benefit. Maybe even a benefit that directly addressed a problem most of us have experienced while listening to AM Radio.

Same question, but let's try a different response:

"HD Radio makes your listening experience on AM Radio much more enjoyable. The current analog signal for AM Radio can be easily distorted. You know when your listening to AM Radio and something is about to come up that you really want to hear, but at that very moment, you start driving through a tunnel; under a bridge or near power lines and all you hear is static? That goes away with HD Radio. You won't miss another important point, idea, phone number or home run. The quality and clarity of HD Radio for AM Stations will be equivalent to what you hear listening to FM today."

A little bit more exciting - don't you think? After hearing this message, I'd certainly be more apt to continue listening or be interested in finding out more information about HD Radio.

Try to avoid using features in your marketing messages. Whenever feasible, clearly state the primary benefit of someone using your product or service - preferably a benefit that directly addresses a recognized problem. You'll receive less "static" and more interested customers.

Selling: List of Sales Questions

One of the most critical elements to include when you're selling products or services is to ask questions. Prior to every discussion with a potential customer, you should always have a list of 12 to 15 questions you plan to ask during a sales meeting.

To give you a few ideas, I've listed 97 sales questions on my website. Why 97? That's pretty much when writer's block set in. If you have suggestions for another three or more sales questions, please help me out!

These questions are not listed or categorized in any particular order. Read through them and pick the ones that you can adapt to your specific selling environment and situation.