Social Media Strategy versus Tactics and the Tools to Use

admin    Social Media     Media, Social, Strategy, Tactics, Tools, Versus

Social Media Strategy versus Tactics and the Tools to Use

Facebook and Twitter are not a social media strategy. These are tactics within a social media strategy.

But what exactly is a social media strategy?

A social media strategy is a messaging platform and defines the perceptions, issues and tactics. A social media strategy needs the same preparation as a speech that is prepared for a politician.

In the movie, “Our brand is crisis,” James Carville explains these principles which should be considered for political candidates as well as companies social media.

- Simplicity – the ability to simply state, in a single phrase, what you will do for your clients.

- Relevance – the ability to tell the story in the eyes of your clients.

- Repetition – the relentless effort in telling the story over and over and over again.

So once you have your messaging platform, content creation becomes easier as you can listen to social media and engage in the conversations that are most important by following others, listening to thought leaders, publishing blog post, commenting, creating media and sharing opinions on an industry. Every company should think about defining a strategy so they are consistent with their message, brand and product marketing within all of social media.

Buzz Mouth has built a tool for mid to large companies to integrate their entire online presence in one place. We have clients managing over 500 places where their brand, content and messaging touch. Every time they publish they create a huge impact on their marketplace and have a large voice. This is great as the tool also allows for companies to listen to competitors, thought leaders and the media to engage in the conversation. This is great when they are a 3-person consulting firm with a waiting list of clients. Yet, often small business does not have the werewithall to implement such a dynamic social media strategy. So they outsource it to us.

Otherwise, some nice alternatives are TwitterFeed, HootSuite and Ping.fm to manage multiple channels of social media content.

For 1-5 person companies:

Minimally, we recommend Twitterfeed integration with a WordPress blog that automatically post to Facebook fan page and their Twitter followers. We then suggest using Google Alerts and Social Mentions to monitor what people are saying about you, your employees, your brand and your company. Now with an integrated messaging platform, a small company can be growing a social media strategy. Keep the content focused to your overall goals and you are set.

I often share a couple more analogies about a social media strategy, first it is like writing a book and second like sharing your vision for your company in 3-5 years. What do you want it to be? If you are writing a book about your company, what would it say and why? What do you stand for? What is really interesting to your clients about you?

For 5-25 person companies or aggressive 1-5 person companies:

We recommend using HootSuite as it allows more robust tactics. Although not scalable as a Professional Social Media Management tool.

For 25 or more employees in a company, we recommend a Professional Social Media Management tool where 100′s of tactics can be managed simultaneously. Our goal of the software is to be able to manage your entire online presence from one place.

More tools to come as Buzz Mouth shares their social media strategy through the next 150 blog post. Check back soon.

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Online Marketing and Offline Marketing Strategy in B2b Portal

admin    SEO Marketing     Marketing, Offline, Online, Portal, Strategy

Online Marketing and Offline Marketing Strategy in B2b Portal

If Business is to profit, then Marketing is to business. Since, without marketing, business is not possible whether it is done in any form. Even traditional business had some marketing tactics, be it delivery unto buyer place or flexibility in payment terms. Ultimately, what can turn on more business is often considered as marketing and its implementation after analysis of the situations from time to time can be termed as strategy. I often found, when you say strategy, people nod their head but when it comes to know what is strategy they loose the color of their face.

Strategy is a factor which construes marketing and marketing runs on strategy. What RCC beams are to a building  in the same manner strategy is for marketing .if one claims to be doing marketing without strategy then he may be fooling himself and more to others as without strategy in any manner , marketing is not possible.
The very next thing which comes is how to make strategies for marketing the product?

Before that, let us take some pain to understand what exactly is strategy. Strategy is nothing but understanding the basics of positioning a product, features and potential of product, strength and weakness of products, timely review of planning’s etc and then analyzing it to conclude with some parameters for selling the same product with respect to different zones and geographical areas, this result into strategy. Isn’t it very simple. If one makes simple strategy, he makes simple way to success in business.
After Strategy, What Next?

Then comes the real marketing play. Again, it is followed by another question how to and what can be the modes of marketing.
Lets us see which mode is required, when marketing modes option comes to be chosen for business:

Whether Online Marketing?
Whether Offline Marketing?

Before, discussing about advantages and dis-advantages as well as requirement of online marketing, let’s see the modes and strategies of offline marketing.

a. Direct Marketing
b. Telemarketing
c. Advertisement in TV
d. Campaign based advertisement in Radio.
e. Advertisement in public places, public transportation
f. Participation in Exhibitions & Trade Shows
g. Door to Door Marketing
h. Promotional campaigns
i. Discounts and offers
j. Referral Marketing
k. Public Relations
l. Print Media
M. sponsoring some events, sports etc.

The list can have much more to it, but the aforesaid are considered to be the prominent amongst any other options possible or available for any person.
So, after doing, still one requires any other mode of marketing, before we make a hasty decision, what if some online marketing options are just explored:

a. Contacting and Responding through Mail
B. Advertisement in Google, Yahoo
C. Advertisement through Ad brite
D. Advertisement in Blogs
E. Advertisement in most popular sites and portals
f. Article Marketing
g. Affiliate Marketing
h. Online Viral Marketing
i. Email Marketing
j. Activities in Forum & Social bookmarking
K. Linking with quality sites
l. Banner Exchange
m. Search Engine Optimization via Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Many more to be added, even in this sphere alone.
After referring to all, do you feel one is required and sufficient and if one is, then which one .Then I must answer that absolutely NOT, one cannot be a substitute for other, but both are required.
Because, Offline, marketing is very well known potential mode of marketing and will always be required but at the same only offline marketing will not do justice to your marketing, still don’t believe, then just check the truth as stated below:

a) Round the globe more than 50% business is carried out and communicated through mails which is online mode.
b) Corporates, SMEs, MNC all are dependant upon mail for communication.
c) Young generation is net savvy.
d) People are dependant upon websites to fulfill their basic necessities be it
1) jobs, 
2) accommodation,
3) buying and  selling
4) marriage
5) chatting
6) communication
7) outsourcing work
filing tax returns
9) gathering any information etc
10) on an average more than 50% business man and involved in international trade use B2b Portals to effect the business .
If this is the some eye opening facts , can still one keep away from online marketing ………….Now You Decide !

How Coca-Cola is Reinventing their Marketing Strategy with Social Media

admin    Social Media     CocaCola, Marketing, Media, Reinventing, Social, Strategy, Their

How Coca-Cola is Reinventing their Marketing Strategy with Social Media

Coca-Cola created a new office of digital communications and social media earlier this year. Clyde Tuggle, senior vice president of corporate affairs and productivity at Coca-Cola, explained why: “Mass media is declining in importance. Our future success depends on our continued ability to connect people to our brands and our company all around the world, one person at a time. Our new office of digital communications and social media will help us become even more comfortable and effective in these new spaces.”

This is very big news for a company who used to spend over a billion dollars a year on traditional advertising alone. But what Coca-Cola has learned – no matter how catchy your slogan is or how spectacular your TV commercial looks, you must still work diligently to ensure that you remain number one and a viable, competitive force.

One interesting social networking idea Coca-Cola has developed is a site called CoketTag. CokeTag is a Facebook widget for sharing links. It allows you to make a customizable widget including links from anywhere and share it with your friends.

“This Facebook effort was in pure viral form,” said Phil Mooney, Director of Heritage Communications, one of CokeTag’s creators. “Today, our Coke Facebook community has 3 million members. The only larger community out there on Facebook was for Obama for President,” he added. “Coke made the decision to ‘not go corporate’ and let the group remain in the fans’ hands.”

Mooney cited the example of the Coca-Cola Facebook community that spawned virally, a result of “two guys in LA who created a fan page.” Facebook asked Coke to take-over and manage the Facebook group — as per its policy that brands own their named real estate. Instead, Coke contacted the two group creators and let the fans decide where to take that conversation.”

Phil Mooney has some advice for other companies: “Don’t be afraid to let your community, not the corporation, take ownership of your brand identity. They can be the customers who form more naturally to develop brand attributes.”

Coca-Cola has spent a lot of time building their presence and that has made them very popular. What Coke is doing is what every online corporate entity should do: embrace the effects of an internet presence and capitalize on it. Even if you don’t “get” the platform at first, try try again.

Learn core benefits of social media and how IntelBuilder Social Media Platform can help your business grow by calling 1-866-855-0966. We also have a Power Point presentation on how IntelBuilder can help your company grow

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Do it yourself Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Optimization With your Own Strategy

admin    SEO Marketing     Engine, Optimization, Search, Strategy, Yourself

Do it yourself Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Optimization With your Own Strategy

Do it yourself Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization and web design have become activities that are very popular and accessible to regular people. There is a lot of information available on the web for those eager to get their teeth into it. Basically, if you’ve got plenty of time on your hands and have a fairly good knowledge of how the Internet works, you could learn to do it all yourself. However, the learning process is a time consuming one and it would mean deterring yourself from day to day aspects of your business which require your attention.

There are millions of websites on the internet for different topics and it’s difficult to find one. The best way to finding desire site to using search engines, but the search engine may result more than 100000’s of websites. Websites with high ranking are listed in first few pages. Well, how would you make your website listed as high as possible in the result results?

In order to achieve this you need to work onSearch engine optimization. Search engine marketing is as complex as traditional marketing. It’s applied to a completely different medium, the online one. Even professional companies sometimes offer only some SEO services instead of the whole package.

We have gathered some important tips to make it ease and help you to understand the process involved.

Site Page Naming

Page names are important! Relevant pages should be named after their primary keyword phrase.

Like the directory structure, file names play an equally important role. All file names should contain primary keywords or keyword phrases.

The title tag of your page is the single most important factor to be considered when optimizing your web page for the search engines. It is because most engines & directories place a high level of importance on keywords that are found in your title tag.

Meta Tags

Meta elements provide information about a given webpage, most often to help search engines categorize them correctly, and are inserted into the HTML code in the format illustrated above, but are not visible to a user looking at the site.Meta tags are one of the most important elements of a web page when a search engine indexes it. This was originally created to help search engines find out important information about your page that they might have had difficulty determining otherwise. For Example, related keywords or a description of the page itself.

A search engine to display a short description of what your web page contains very often uses the description Meta tag. Some search engines look at the keywords entered into the keywords meta tag and will use this to display your page in the search results if it is one of the words used in the search criteria.

Web Page Copywriting

Like a Meta and Title tags, the content of your page is an important element in the search engine optimization process. The page copy being the actual, visible main content of the page should be presented and arranged in a logical and visually pleasing manner.

1. For the best results each page you submit should contain at least 200 words.

2. Include all keywords and arrange them in logical and readable manner.

3. More interlinking of keywords throughout the website.

Site Navigation

Is your site’s navigation search engine friendly? Search engines require simple text based navigation in order to correctly spider your website. Java Script based navigation only, results in an incomplete index of your website. Some important suggestions for site navigation:

1. Avoid using flash at main page.

2. Addition of keyword related text based navigation should be added to the bottom of all pages.

3. Using Sitemap

4. Avoid using image based navigation

Image ‘alt’ Attribute

Describe your images with the use of the alt tag. This will help search engines that index images to find your pages and will also help readers who use text only web browsers.

1. Do not use more than 2-3 keywords per page

2. Describe the image and don’t just list the keywords.

Link Popularity

Link popularity is how many other websites are pointing to your website. If you have 199 Web pages pointing to your domain, then your link popularity is 199. Link popularity varies because each engine indexes the web differently. Ideally you would want a minimum of several hundred links per search engine, back to your website; but actual figures depend on the number of links held by your competition.

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Steps to Ensuring a Great Search Strategy

admin    Website Marketing     Ensuring, Great, Search, Steps, Strategy

Steps to Ensuring a Great Search Strategy

Of course you know that search engine optimization needs to be a core part of any online business’ strategy online.  But how can we make sure this information helps large websites and multiple departments so that our content strategies are the best possible strategies company-wide?  This article will discuss how to implement effective search marketing strategies.  Companies today need to implement these areas to ensure the maximum search engine exposure on their large websites.

1. Make sure that your website can be discovered by the search engines

If the search engines have not discovered your website, you’re in trouble!  Your web architecture is extremely important in this process.  All website development teams need to create websites and web pages in a way that they can be crawled and indexed easily by the search engines.  But search strategy doesn’t stop there!

Upper management us a core ingredient to productive search marketing strategy.  Management teams should provide the support that will be crucial for making your web architecture the most search engine friendly that it can be.  If you are a manager overseeing a development team, you should be much more concerned with functional outcomes rather than implementation.  In layman’s terms, you need to be more concerned with easy to navigate menu systems rather than Flash menus that look “cool”.  Your nice looking navigation systems are not going to sell your products any better, and may deter future users from using your website accurately.

2. Every person in the company should be on board with your search strategy goals.

Your market research teams, marketing teams, product development teams, site development teams, and those creating company visions – everyone! – needs to be on board and understand how much value can come from search data – and how to make great use of it.  There needs to be collaboration at the highest level and all marketing arms (online advertising, email marketing departments, offline marketing departments, etc) all need to share search marketing data and really understand how this data impacts their own departments.

3. Content writers need to “get it.”

Your company’s content writers need to understand the importance of great keyword researchers, searcher personas, and searcher behavior.  No one should write a piece of content unless they first answer the following questions:

a. What are the company goals for this page?

b. What are we trying to get the person to when they get to this page?

c. Why would a visitor find this page from the search engines?  What would they be looking to get or do?

d. Why would this visitor want to become a conversion?

4. Your offline marketing teams need to be up to date with your search strategies.

All offline marketing campaigns really need to have your core search strategies components to it.  We need to make sure that these departments understand how searches might be derived from their marketing efforts.  From there, they need to take it a step further and really think about what the searcher’s experience would be.  Any advertising agencies that are working with your company and building web content to support your offline marketing need to have search-friendliness as a core and critical requirement.

Website Marketing Before the Web Designer Comes: 5 Essential Strategy Questions

admin    Website Marketing     Before, Comes, Designer, Essential, Marketing, Questions, Strategy, Website

Website Marketing Before the Web Designer Comes: 5 Essential Strategy Questions

Right after deciding, “I need a website,” clients often say, “I need a web designer!” Actually, before even whispering the 2 little words “web design,” you need to answer these five questions. The answers will change the way you relate to your web designer (and maybe you will realize you don’t need one).

(1) What is the purpose of your website? Suppose you primarily market a professional service through face-to-face networking and live referrals. Your website will look different from a marketer who sells info products to buyers all over the world.

When you’re well-known through face-to-face contacts, your website serve as an additional source of information to potential customers. You may need only a basic “calling card” site: a list of contact information, coming appearances and basic brochure copy. But you’ll need to use copywriting style because visitors read differently on the web than they do in print.

But suppose your website is your primary revenue source. In that case, you’ll need to direct visitors to your “for sale” section and come up with a plan to collect money.

(2) Who will be your ideal target market? Can they afford your services? Where do they shop?

Most of us plunge into a business without going deeply into this question. One career coach wanted to work with clients who were unemployed. He soon realized that unemployed people need to think first about putting food on the table. They were looking for advice only from sources where they didn’t have to pay.

Some markets just don’t shop on the Internet. They go offline. They like to visit malls and brick and mortar stores. They may visit your website for background info but they’ll buy from someone they can see face-to-face.

(3) What action do you want visitors to take? Do you want them to sign up for a consultation, call you for an appointment, buy a product or sign up for your ezine?

Your home page copy should motivate your visitors to take one simple action. If they sign up for your ezine and then leave, you’ve reached success.

Make it easy for visitors to take this action. More than once, I’ve had to prowl through pages on a website trying to figure out how to buy a product, subscribe to an ezine or attend a teleseminar.

(4) How will you maintain your site? Even your static pages need to be updated regularly if you’re going to maintain a credible presence.

Many new website owners budget the cost of web design and a year of web hosting. But that’s only the beginning. A website that’s unchanged will grow cobwebs. It’s easy to tell when you’ve landed on a website where nobody’s home. Something’s broken. The whole place looks abandoned.

You’ll need to replace broken links, fix spelling errors, add updates to your schedule, and a whole lot more. And in my experience, your website will look different after five or six months. You’ve changed. Your market has changed. You’ve got new products, services and messages.

That’s why I say, “You need to become your own web designer, marry your web designer, or be prepared to pay.” Fortunately, in today’s world, you can create a website where making a change is as easy as sending an email. I would not settle for less.

(5) How will you promote your site? The number one question I get is, “How do I attract traffic to my site?”

A website without promotion is like a 747 flying around the world without any passengers: expensive and useless. You probably don’t need expensive, esoteric SEO strategies. Article marketing, blogs and social marketing can attract all the traffic you need in many markets.

(6) How will you convert browsers to buyers? Your message has to motivate visitors – fast. When visitors land on your home page, you have 5 seconds to hook them. When they land on your sales page, they are asking, “What’s In It For Me?”

That’s why many top Internet marketing gurus have invested in copywriting and copywriting training. Changing your content will have a powerful effect on your sales, more than any other factor. Your design functions only to help visitors read your content.

(7) How will you grow your website with your business? Very few businesses look the same after 6 months, a year or 2 years. I have seen people start as dog trainers and end up as business consultants (or vice versa).

Change means staying connected to your market. You’ll need to keep testing and to find systematic ways to stay connected. You can use social marketing, certain types of teleclasses, and the right kind of testing.

Viral Marketing – Cost-effective Online Marketing Strategy

admin    SEO Marketing     Costeffective, Marketing, Online, Strategy, Viral

Viral Marketing – Cost-effective Online Marketing Strategy

Viral marketing is a crucial factor as far as gaining fame and success on the web is concerned. It is a cost-effective online marketing strategy that skillfully utilizes a word-of-mouth technique to spread your marketing message. Viral marketing helps to spread your promotional message quickly to a widespread group of prospective customers.

Advertise Your Online Business on the Internet in an Effective Way

While building a successful marketing strategy, integrate the following elements to get more positive results for your online business:

• Give away free products or services
• Provide effortless transfer to others
• Exploit common human motivations and behaviors to make your website more popular
• Utilize pre existing communication networks to create a bigger network circle
• Take advantage of others’ resources to place links on other websites

A successful viral marketing campaign can be developed through pre-existing social networks or online communities. Article marketing is one of the most effective internet marketing tools to get the much-needed back links to your website. Thus obtaining quality inbound links will increase your search engine ranking; drive targeted traffic; increase sales; gain brand recognition and decrease marketing expenses.

Make the Most of Internet Marketing

To present your marketing message on the Internet, harness the power of viral marketing strategies and techniques by taking advantage of internet advertising service providers. These service providers have a team of online advertising experts to carry out a wide range of website promotion services including improving your ranking on the major search engines; running successful ad campaigns at cost effective rates; providing well structured back links; doing proper keyword research and using them in various campaigns; implementing strategies; maintaining campaign tracking and reporting and maintaining feeder websites.

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Coaches, Use Online Marketing Strategy to Get Clients

admin    SEO Marketing     Clients, Coaches, Marketing, Online, Strategy

Coaches, Use Online Marketing Strategy to Get Clients

If you run a coaching business and want to use the Internet to get clients, here is a question you should ask yourself: “What is your online marketing strategy?”

If your online marketing strategy consists of doing a single marketing task every once in a while, you should change that right now. As an online business owner, you need to market your online business on a regular basis if you want to get tangible results. By results I mean getting more web site traffic and more customers.

When I just started my coaching business I was not consistent with marketing it. I would optimize my web site every year and I would write a single article every six months. I was still able to get some web site traffic and some sales, but they were not very consistent.

However, once I stopped my random marketing campaign and created an online marketing plan I started getting much more web site traffic and many more customers. A steady marketing strategy has been bringing me a consistent stream of customers ever since.

Here is how you can create a consistent online marketing strategy for your coaching business to bring in steady web site traffic, clients and sales:

- Take a look at what marketing that you have already done. Spend some time reviewing the marketing techniques you are already using so that you will not have to do the same work twice.

- Make sure that you have a useful, professional web site for your business. A professional and user-friendly web site is the #1 priority for you, as an online business owner. Your web site is what will help you get more clients and more sales online.

You can use your web site to help your potential customers find out more about you and your services, subscribe to your newsletter and buy your products.

- Create an effective online marketing strategy for marketing your business online. Your strategy is a process that will reliably bring your potential customers to your web site all the time.

Your strategy should use various online marketing techniques, such as article marketing, blogging, search engine optimization, and many more. It should also describe how you are going to use them to bring your potential customers to your web site and get them to buy your products and services.

- Implement your online marketing strategy. Break your online marketing strategy into many manageable 1-2 hour tasks that are easy to complete and that you can add to your schedule.

For example, if your strategy includes blogging, the first task is setting up your blog. The next task is scheduling your blog posts. Next tasks are scheduling blogging 2-3 times a week and creating your actual blog posts.

Make sure that you create a marketing strategy for your coaching business! Having an online marketing strategy and following it is the only way to gain more coaching clients online.

Why Subscribers and Community-Building Are Vital to Your Social Media Marketing Strategy?

admin    Social Media     CommunityBuilding, Marketing, Media, Social, Strategy, Subscribers, Vital

Why Subscribers and Community-Building Are Vital to Your Social Media Marketing Strategy?

If you want your social media marketing campaign and online brand to flourish, you must build a powerful community of subscribers, a.k.a. fans.  Subscribers are a key ingredient to the success of popular websites because they allow you to further the reach of your online communications. Here are some of the top reasons why building a subscriber base is such a vital component of your social media marketing success. 

RSS Feed Users Are Often Web Publishers Themselves:

Did you know that eleven percent or less of web users know how to use RSS?  It makes sense that those who are savvy enough to use RSS are also the ones who produce and share information on the web.  When you build your RSS subscribers, you are forming relationships with influential people who are the movers and shakers of the web.  As long as you do a great job of providing quality content that is worth spreading, your subscribers are bound to help you out by getting your message to more people, who may in turn spread your message even further. 

Subscribers Build Community:

The communities of social media are what attract users.  Compelling communities that flourish attract more people and make sites worth visiting.  For example, as the community on Facebook grew and attracted people from all walks of life, people were slowly drawn away from Myspace and moved over to Facebook. 

The More Subscribers You Have, the More Inbound Links You Get:

As you grow your subscriber base, an increasing number of them will consider you as a source of linkable content.  Many web publishers are constantly on the hunt for great content that they can link to or refer to in their own posts.  If you consistently provide high quality content, they will look to you as a resource.  The more times your content is linked to, the more SEO benefits you will get from link juice.  You can accomplish this simply by making an effort to constantly provide great content.  The occasional link bait wouldn’t hurt either. 

Your Subscribers Will Motivate You to Produce Better Content:

The more you grow your subscriber base, the more feedback you will receive about your content.  The feedback you get will enable you to learn more about your niche and how you can serve your subscribers better.  When you know that your reach is growing, you will inevitably make a greater effort to produce excellent content that gets people talking.  As a result, you will improve your work in many aspects and become an authority in your niche. 

Social Proofing Benefits:

Subscribers serve as social proofing.  When new visitors to your site see that you have lots of subscribers/fans, they are more likely to believe that your site is worth visiting and subscribing to.  When new visitors see your subscriber list, they will give you the time of day and be more likely to join your community right then and there. 

Less Reliance on Traditional PR:

Traditional PR methods such as pitching to the media and other bloggers will no longer be a necessity if you have a large subscriber base.  When you grow your subscriber base, you will see increasing returns for your communications.  Media coverage will come naturally, without you having to solicit it. 

No matter what type of online business you have, you will be in a better position than your competitors if you build a specific audience around your content.  When you build that audience and connect with them on a personal level, it takes your social media marketing campaign up a notch, enabling you to grow your online brand. 

How to Grow Your Subscriber Base:

Now that you understand why it is so important for you to grow your online subscriber base, here are a few tips on how you can accomplish the task.  First off, you must create content that gets people’s attention. It must have networking built into it and encourage people to share it with others.  Your content must also contain multiple hooks to get more visitors to join.  Great content is usually the biggest pull but you should also use other methods to attract new subscribers. 

Make sure your content is focused on your niche.  Your goal should be to consistently meet the expectations of your subscribers.  People are going to visit your site expecting a certain type of content so try not to go off topic too much and you will build a stronger, more tight-knit community. 

Surely there are plenty of other communities in your niche already.  In order to attract more subscribers, study the existing communities and try to do things differently from them.  When you focus on topics or details that existing communities in your niche aren’t touching upon, you can achieve online growth much more quickly. 

The Strategy Behind the Firm – Search Engine Marketing Through the Eyes of a CEO

admin    SEO Marketing     Behind, Engine, Eyes, Firm, Marketing, Search, Strategy, Through

The Strategy Behind the Firm – Search Engine Marketing Through the Eyes of a CEO

In the Beginning, there was the internet…

In 1997, the internet really began to take flight and with the invention of this information highway came the emergence of innovative business avenues. The internet became the primary means by which many companies marketed themselves. The Web meant more exposure on a global basis and it became the primary means for many companies to market themselves. But for many companies, success was not so easy and the biggest question was how to use this novel technology to grow an online business. From this new demand for online marketing sprouted the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) industry to tackle all the problems businesses faced by contributing their sites to billions like theirs on the Web. SEM got the little guy a voice and allowed companies to differentiate themselves from the pack.

What’s the problem with the search engine marketing industry?

Since Google’s famous IPO in 2004, everyone and their brother seems to have started an SEM firm. In fact, it has been such a lucrative industry that some large ad agencies are opening their own firms. Companies have shelled out millions to educate and train their employees on every aspect of optimization, pay per click, link building and internet marketing. Everyone is hungry and scrambling to get a piece of the million dollar pie.

The upside of this exponential growth is that search engine marketing is finally being accepted as a valuable marketing channel, but have the strategies and tactics used to build a successful and “white hat” adhering firm been sacrificed all in the name of money?

To delve into this question one first has to look at the basic structure of a good SEM campaign. There is so much research that goes into each campaign beginning with understanding the client’s company. Once an SEM firm knows how their client operates, they can create a unique campaign to decide whether to utilizing keyword selection, content creation and/or link building will convert visitors into customers and positively impact the ROI.

Unfortunately, some SEM firms lack the patience, knowledge or funding to correctly implement the fundamentals of a good campaign. To make up for their shortcomings in SEM expertise, some firms may throw out a presumptuous “guarantee” ensuring the number one spot in organic search for a website in order to seal the deal with clients. In SEM, however, there are no guarantees. Search engine algorithms change frequently, so the chances of one website dominating the number one spot for more than a few days can NEVER be guaranteed.

SEM firms cannot always be to blame, as software is also suspect. Software has undoubtedly eased the way most SEM firms approach construction of complex paid search campaigns, but some agencies aren’t looking at the data and making smart business decisions. Software cannot think strategically. In order to manage a successful paid search campaign, understanding the financial metrics of a client’s company and installing strategic business rules are crucial. It’s not enough to just do, firms must test and measure, then test and measure again. It’s important to think, analyze, test and strategize to ensure that the campaign is the best it can possibly be.

In “natural” or “organic” search, some SEM firms seem to lose sight of what they are really doing for their client. These firms will hide behind the complexity of SEO and keep clients in the dark, blaming the lack of results on “changes in the algorithms”.

Taking over accounts of clients who have previously been misguided by their former SEM firms is sometimes a depressing reality. It allows the new firm insight of what the former firm did incorrectly; whether it’s discovering that the wrong strategy had been employed or actual results were being construed, it’s embarrassing for “white hat” SEM firms to clean up the messes of malpractice.

So how can this all be remedied?

The key to having a successful SEM campaign means knowing basic terminology. Clients that are educated in good SEM practices can never be steered wrong.

There are three keys to optimizing a site properly to achieve top, natural search engine rankings – keyword selection, content development and link popularity.

Choosing good keywords comes from an SEM firm’s knowledge of what their client’s company does and wants to accomplish. Without this knowledge, choosing correct and targeted keywords proves difficult and could lead to a disastrous campaign. Take, for instance, a large site like AutoTrader.com with a Google PageRank of 7/10. They will be able to compete for the most competitive keyword phrases, such as ‘used car’ because their site is bigger with more content linking “used car” back to their site. However, for newer, smaller online businesses, targeting niche keyword phrases, like “Atlanta used car dealership” may prove more successful. Picking keywords that are most likely to convert into sales that have relevancy to the website are a vital part of a good campaign.

In natural search, content is king. To be found for 100 keywords, then write at least 100 pages of website content covering each target keyword phrase. This may mean bringing in a content writer to optimize each page so the target keywords and phrases will be found by Google and Yahoo; slapping on a page title and a META tag won’t do the trick.

Finally, link popularity is critical to top search engine rankings. A link from ‘site A’ to ‘site B’ is like a vote from ‘site A’ for ‘site B’. The more votes a site has from other sites, the higher it will rank in Google. The problem is, some SEO firms don’t do link building (or content development). They plug in some titles and tags and hope for the best without knowing what a great asset link building is for their clients. To achieve top search engine rankings, link building is incredibly useful.

The bottom line, to be successful in paid search and search engine optimization, start with the right strategy; before hiring a search engine marketing agency, do the homework. Ask a lot of questions and hold the SEM firm accountable for bottom line results. Remember that there are no guarantees in this business; there is only strategy, which if done right, will lead to great online successes.