Mar
1st

Oneupweb : PPC Expansion & Exploration

Posted by Bob on March 1, 2010 at 10:27 am

Google AdWords is a huge piece of your Paid Search (PPC) campaign, eh? I suppose that Yahoo! and Bing also contribute to your efforts, or you plan to include them at some point on the horizon. But is that the end of the road? Are you exhausting all of your PPC resources?

If you haven’t already, it’s time to branch out and explore some new PPC marketing opportunities. Don’t get me wrong, Google is still the king when it comes to getting your company in front of a large and qualified audience. But there are other opportunities that allow you to get your message in front of other large audiences.

With social sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, you can target very specific demographics, while comparison shopping engines like Google Product Search and PriceGrabber allow you to place your product in front of interested consumers.

Both Facebook and Linked in allow you to create specifically targeted PPC ads that you can display to the demographic of your choosing. The targeted demographic can be as large or as small as you want it to be. Though these are placement ads, and the person seeing the ad is not actively searching for your product or service, the granular control over demographics helps to ensure that your message is reaching qualified prospective customers.

Expanding into shopping engines like Google Product Search allows you to highlight your product in a shopping environment. People conducting searches in shopping engines are usually deeper into the conversion funnel, meaning that it’s likely they have already done their research and are ready to purchase. This places your product in front of motivated buyers. If you’re a price leader, or offer good purchasing incentives, then shopping engines are a great place for expansion! Best of all, Google Product Search is free and can be integrated into your existing AdWords campaign.

It’s really an exciting time to be involved in PPC. There are so many opportunities, outlets and channels to leverage and explore. Expanding your campaigns outside of traditional search engine platforms and into other areas could supply the boost you’re looking for, and take your campaign to the next level!

Is your company ready to break through the boundaries of its current PPC efforts? Or are you ready to take your performance to the next level? Contact an expert like Oneupweb. Growing businesses is what we do, and we would love to help you reach your goals.

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Feb
19th

Oneupweb : Word Of Mouth ROI And Brand Equity

Posted by Vern on February 19, 2010 at 9:58 am

Today’s Analytic Packages Are Creating False Hope That All Online Interactions Are Attributable.

Blame it on Google Analytics, Omniture or even WebTrends for that matter. The perceived ease in which we track online marketing data has created unrealistic expectations in the minds of online marketers. Don’t get me wrong, many online marketing activities have a measurable spend and corresponding sales value. You spend $0.55 for a click on your Google PPC ad that results in a sale of $12.00. At its very basic level your ROI is $12.00/$0.55=2,181%. That sale can be attributed to that particular ad and keyword.

When the only game in town was PPC on Google and Yahoo, attribution was pretty cut and dry. We became programmed to the certainty that sales/spend=measure of success. It was so easy to assume that we could apply the same model to other online marketing. This is where the digital marketing analysis picture begins to get cloudy. If you’re running PPC along with an ongoing SEO effort, you may argue that attribution is precise. Well, what about ad impressions (not clicks)? Maybe the searcher you’re tracking post-click viewed multiple SERPs, saw many variations of PPC ads along with your organic listings and finally clicked on the 10th variation. Since you can’t attribute that sale to impressions, how do you really know what induced the sale?

Add social digital marketing and attribution becomes almost impossible. Social digital marketing is essentially 21st century “word of mouth.” Oneupweb does a wonderful job of tracking interactions across all digital channels. Heck—PodTractor, Oneupweb’s podcast tracking system, was ground-breaking in 2006 and to this day, remains unmatched in its functionality. Our Twitter and Facebook reporting documents interactions in these two venues like no other analytics available. But how do you track/document the conversation between two friends who “saw it on Facebook” or “looked it up on Google” that resulted in direct navigation to your website for a purchase? You can’t.

Every dollar a CMO spends online can generate word of mouth marketing and is an investment in building brand equity. This concept is very often lost in the buzz of attribution. We’ve become slaves to micro-managing ROI at the keyword level, never giving credit to that SEO project or Twitter effort in adding to brand equity and building market share.

I encourage you to take a step back and look at your marketing budget as a vehicle to drive word of mouth, increase brand equity and improve total sales. Take off the blinders. Stop concentrating on ROI by keyword and know that whatever advertising and marketing you’re doing online can’t be totally compartmentalized. Get back to the simple ROI calculation: $25,000,000 in sales/ $1,000,000 in online spend = kick ass results, no matter where that money was spent.

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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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Jan
6th

The Release of the Google Nexus One

Posted by Bryson on January 6, 2010 at 4:54 pm

Yesterday marked the release of the new Google Nexus One phone, which was originally only available directly through the Google website. The launch of the Android-powered Nexus One may change the landscape of the Smartphone industry as we know it. Additionally, I predict that it will have a butterfly effect on many other industries that rely on web accessibility and the convenience of “surfing” the net. So, you can hang ten like never before using the latest Android 2.1 software and the 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset.

Unlike previous Android phones, there is no slowdown or lag when you push the phone’s performance. And there is less need to kill applications to keep the device humming. The Google phone will also add a high-resolution screen (based on an OLED touch screen). Nexus One comes with all the standard Google Mobile apps installed, like search, maps, Gmail, YouTube and GTalk (Google Talk). It also includes additional goodies like Maps Navigation and Google Voice, and these apps are speedier than ever, making it easier to shop on-the-go or browse at will.

The Nexus One has a few cool new features as well—one of those things being a voice-enabled keyboard. All you do is speak, and it does the text messaging, email writing or search querying for you. Another feature to explore is the YouTube widget, which allows you to quickly access the videos you want.

The big idea is that Smartphones are getting smarter. Along with their newly acquired intelligence and capabilities, they are getting larger and more like small tablets. I predict that they will probably become the all-in-one hub for communication in our daily routines in the future. Why? Because their functionality is becoming frighteningly comparable to personal computers.

Here’s the price breakdown for the Nexus One:

$529.00 for the Nexus One unlocked
$19.99 AC Adapter
Additional monthly service fees and upgrades not included

Of course, Google threw in an unexpected wrinkle. If it is bought unlocked directly from the Google store and if you sign a contract with T-Mobile, it’s $199. It is being shipped to just 4 countries as of now, including the USA, UK, Singapore and Hong Kong. And it’s set to be released in Europe sometime in early spring. Shortly thereafter, it’s set to go worldwide.

At Oneupweb, we like the convenience that mobile has to offer, especially the idea that you can peruse our fine services no matter where you are. So what are you waiting for? Go ahead, check out what we have to offer your business! We are as relentless and efficient as the 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor used in the Google Nexus One (which is very relentless, take my word for it).

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