Feb
8th

Oneupweb : Try Not To Get Lost Out There

Posted by Nick on February 8, 2010 at 10:02 am

I am, as my sister recently called me, a “Lost Junkie.” You know, that television show about a plane crash on a mysterious island full of whispers, monsters and all sorts of other crazy stuff. With the recent start of the show’s final season, I’ve switched back into full addiction mode, which has naturally caused my pondering of the show to cross over into my day-to-day thinking about digital marketing. Specifically, it got me thinking about marketing strategies as a whole, which led to the following idea:

When it comes to your marketing strategy, don’t get stuck on an island.

Yes, it sounds cheesy, but hear me out. What I’m basically saying is that from time to time it pays to step back and take a look at the big picture. Take a look at your marketing strategy and ask yourself what’s working, what’s not and whether there any areas of your business that could benefit from additional marketing efforts. There are a variety of exciting, new marketing methods available to businesses today, but not everyone is utilizing these channels to reach their existing and potential audiences.

So what do I mean when I say, “Don’t get stuck on an island”? I’m talking about not being afraid to try new marketing initiatives and not focusing so much on a single marketing effort. Sure, a single method might be working like gangbusters for you and that’s great. You should continue to pursue it. Just don’t be afraid to try something new. Perhaps you’ve already established your business in its specific natural search space. But have you thought about branching out into social media? Maybe you’ve promoted your business through PPC for years and have never given much thought to your site’s natural presence in the engines, or the site’s design and how it might be affecting your user experience. Some SEO or design work might be just the thing you need to establish yourself in the natural space.

The overall lesson here is that there’s a lot of opportunity out there. While your current efforts might be working great, if you don’t take some time every once in a while to look at your total marketing strategy, you may find that you’ve also become stranded on a veritable marketing-island. And monsters or not, that sounds a little scary to me.

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Feb
1st

The New Agency Selection Model: Listening

Posted by Luke on February 1, 2010 at 10:12 am

In both our personal and professional lives, it’s a well known fact that humans think faster than they listen. Rather than listen, we’re more concerned with pulling together a response or answer which often comes at the expense of the key point or message.

As a digital marketer, 99.9 percent of communication with clients is done through either email or phone. This leaves no room to pick up on body language, hand gestures or other nonverbal cues. As a result, it’s imperative that we constantly confirm and validate the words of our clients.

With an arsenal including web design, SEO, PPC, app development, social media and more, we have quite a few creative and technical minds within the Oneupweb office. However, experience and creativity go out the window if there’s a listening breakdown during the early stages of a client needs assessment. When you combine strong listening skills with creativity and experience, you lay the foundation to not only deliver a bull’s-eye proposal, but to also exceed expectations and goals.

At Oneupweb, we pride ourselves on being strong listeners with integrated solutions. Based on what we learn about your company, we’re not afraid to tell you that what you’re looking for may not be the best solution. You may be looking at one channel and we may propose three. And you can bet that one of those channels will be social media.

Social media provides one of the ultimate channels to listen to your customers—like an online focus group. We’re going to listen to you and then we’re going to help you listen to your clients. As fundamental as listening may be, it’s probably the weakest skill across any position within an organization.

When it comes to decisions based on price alone, you get what you pay for. Try to find that agency that makes you say, “Wow, they were really listening.”

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Dec
28th

Facebook PPC: Frequency Capping Is Key

Posted by Adam on December 28, 2009 at 5:18 pm

We’ve talked previously on StraightUpSearch about how Facebook’s Pay Per Click advertising campaigns can integrate with existing digital marketing initiatives quite nicely. Steven discussed some of the ways to target a specific audience through Facebook back in October.

Once you’ve caught up and had the time think about all the unique targeting options that Facebook provides, you should start planning your ad messaging out for the next several weeks. Why? Think about your own perception of advertising. What types of advertising do you welcome and what types do you despise? For me, there’s nothing worse than going to commercial break only to see the same commercial you’ve seen during every break for the past three months. You’ll find the same concept to be true on Facebook. It’s very important to make sure that your message remains fresh and helpful to the user. Since you’ll be targeting and re-targeting the same audience, complacency in your message will quickly make your ad invisible to users. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Facebook’s targeting abilities also make it easy to choose a specific niche audience. Depending on your budget, size of the audience, and audience usage, your ad may be seen by one person, multiple times per day. Scale this out over the course of a month and at the end, the user will be pretty tired of seeing your ad.

2. Facebook and other social channels are different in nature than search advertising. In search, users are seeking out a solution to a problem which classifies it as ‘pull’ advertising. Within social networks, users are served unsolicited offers which qualifies social PPC as ‘push’ advertising. This puts much more pressure on the ad to be creative, unique and compelling.

3. Users have the ability to vote down your ad. Facebook recently added the feature where users can choose to hide certain ads. If your ad message and offer become stale, there is a good chance that the user will choose to no longer have your ad served to them.

When planning out your ad messages, consider customers’ buying behaviors, upcoming product launches and upcoming promotions. You may even consider creating an exclusive promotion for Facebook users once in a while.

No matter how you do it, make sure you keep your messaging fresh. If you don’t, I can guarantee that you’ll quickly see plummeting impression volume, click-through rates and conversion rates in no time.

And as always, it may be a good idea to consult a professional digital marketing agency like Oneupweb to help you get started!

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Nov
25th

“You” Marketing

Posted by Luke on November 25, 2009 at 4:04 pm

Traditional marketing focuses on making a sale and ends once that sale is made. In other words, traditional marketing is “me” marketing. Here’s our business, here’s our product. Our newsletter will reach out to you each month to check in.

Smart marketing is “you” marketing. “You” marketing is when every message, every conversation and every touch-point is about the consumer. Rather than count your money, you should be counting the number of new relationships at the end of each month.

“You” marketing recognizes the numerous channels and opportunities to connect with an audience. Get rid of the mindset that the bigger the audience, the better. A more efficient mindset to consider is that a smaller, targeted audience translates into a bigger bulls-eye. However, the bulls-eye in this instance is not to close, but rather gain initial approval from the consumer and then broaden it.

Consider a cancer screening center that distributes a press release, outlining a new study that reveals an increased risk for prostate cancer in men with high-protein diets. The press release then links to the website, which offers a free PDF download of the full study. At the end of the study, there is a brief description and link to an application allowing men to enter diet-related information to calculate their individual risk. Depending on your risk, the results may highly recommend that you schedule a screening. This recommendation includes a 1-800 number that connects you instantly with a specialist. The end goal for this center is to generate cancer screenings.

A competitor may decide to rely strictly on Google AdWords Pay-Per-Click advertising to send traffic directly to a page with a 1-800 number. The cancer screening center that distributed the press release enjoys a 40% higher number of incoming calls to their specialists.

Scenarios aside, it’s about finding the right marketing combination that pushes consumers through the sales cycle, no matter how many necessary steps are required in between.

The first step to finding the right marketing combination is to be aware of every single marketing weapon in your arsenal. Apply benefits and features of what you are offering to your target audience’s everyday life.

Oneupweb now offers an expanded list of services to help you take full advantage of your arsenal. Take a look at our weapons cache and take what you need.

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Jun
25th

Pay-Per-Click Wish List

Posted by Mike on June 25, 2009 at 5:28 pm

Today marks the halfway point to Christmas, but I’ve already started a wish list of things that I would like to see under the tree. Instead of this list being for Santa, it’s addressed to the major paid search engines: Google, Yahoo and Bing. If even half of this wish list is granted by the end of the year then it will be a very happy holiday season for PPC advertisers everywhere.

Google —

Change negatives so they work beyond the 10th word in a search query. This isn’t something that most advertisers will run into on a daily basis, but it does happen. Currently, negative keywords will only work if the keyword is one of the first ten words in a search query. Take for example the search query : “is there a list of the most popular video games for the xbox”. In this case your ad would still show even if “Xbox” was in your list of negative keywords.
Allow the blocking of individual search network partners. The ability to pick and choose which search network sites will display your ads would help to reduce spending budget on sites that rarely or never lead to conversions.

Yahoo —

Release a campaign management program similar to Adwords Editor. If you’ve ever managed a paid advertising campaign then you will know how time consuming it can be to make a large number of changes through the use of web interfaces. Yahoo still hasn’t bothered to create a stand-alone campaign management tool similar to Adwords Editor or Adcenter Desktop. I really wish they would make this a priority because it would make management much easier and more time efficient.
Add phrase/exact/broad match similar to Google and Bing. Standard and advanced match don’t offer the level of targeting that comes by using the phrase/exact/broad match methods used by the other engines.
Clean up your sponsored search network. The Yahoo sponsored search network is notorious for being full of made-for-ad sites that drain budgets and reduce your ROI since they very rarely generate conversions.
Increase the limit of blocked domains. Yahoo currently limits the number of blocked domains to 500. Due to the poor quality of the sponsored search network, this limit is often reached in a short amount of time — and there is nothing that can be done once it is reached.

Bing —

Improve the web management interface and AdCenter Desktop. Nothing is more annoying than not being able to adjust bids or pause individual keyword match types without going into a separate screen.
Add capitalization support to dynamic keyword insertion. Google and Yahoo have this one figured out, so it would be nice to see Microsoft add this feature. Proper capitalization improves the look of ads and can help boost click-thru rates.
Improve day-parting targeting options. The current system only allows advertisers to day-part in four hour blocks instead of 15 minute increments like Google, or one hour blocks like Yahoo. Greater control helps to ensure your ads only run when they have the best chance of leading to conversions.

Although the list is short, it’s full of things I would really like to see happen before the snow flies. What is on your paid advertising wish list? Leave a comment with what you would like to see changed or improved in regards to paid advertising, and hopefully, the search engines will take note and deliver your wish. Hurry though, only 182 days left until Christmas!

Image: Courtesy of Primitive Surf

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