Search Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
Darren Zapsky
Small Business Online Advertising Strategies
While professional search engine optimization (SEO) is one of
the smartest investments a Website owner could make it does have
its limitations. There are other search engine marketing
solutions that offer more flexibility than SEO ever could. This
article is not meant to suggest that these solutions should be
considered above a professional SEO
campaign, but because SEO is a long-term process these
solutions could be considered as an addition to SEO.
Statistics show that throughout 2005 b2b companies moved up to
40% of their advertising budgets online and b2c companies moved
up to 56% of their advertising budget online. Moving this much
of advertising budgets towards the Internet may not make sense
for many small businesses but we could still learn a few things
from observing the larger businesses. One of those observations
could be that larger businesses are taking advantage of the same
advertising opportunities given to the small business owners by
the major search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN. Below are some
search engine marketing solutions being used by businesses
today.
Pay-Per-Click
Small business owners need to know how to effectively leverage
the Internet to their advantage. Investing large portions of
their advertising budget into SEO and playing the Google sandbox
waiting game really isn't a smart business practice.
Pay-per-click is a great addition to SEO and is an option most
businesses should consider. Pay-per-click offers so much
flexibility that it's almost silly for a business not try at
least a small test campaign. Pay-per-click offers the
flexibility and convenience of setting your own budget and
creating your own advertisements. Other conveniences of
pay-per-click are that you can create a new advertising campaign
in a few minutes and turn the advertisements on and off in an
instant. This feature is great for seasonal or holiday
campaigns. Other advantages are that pay-per-click can be
targeted by geographical region making it is possible to narrow
the advertisements within a city location or globally.
Site Targeting
Site Targeting is Google's new program that allows you to
customize text or banner advertisements and display them across
specific Websites within the Google network. You can target
Websites by suggesting keywords to Google and allowing Google to
choose from the network which Websites are relevant to those
keywords. Or you could suggest a specific Website URL to Google
and Google will let you know if that Website is available within
the network. You may even be able to specify which page within
the Website you want to advertise your customized advertisements
on. This form of advertising is new from Google and the
advertising opportunities within the network are slim;
therefore, caution should be taken to test your market within
the network before throwing a large amount of money at this form
of advertising. The payment model for this program is CPM (cost
per 1000 impressions).
Behavioral Targeting
The Yahoo!
Impulse program provides businesses with the ability to
target Internet users based on their past Internet behaviors.
With this method of advertising we can target users with text
and banner ads customized to whatever the user has recently
searched or viewed online. For example, if you sell canoe
camping products you could target Internet users who have
recently visited canoe camping Websites, or performed canoe
camping searches. Yahoo! Behavioral Targeting allows you to
display your banner advertisements across the Yahoo! Network and
even within the Yahoo! email. Google recently announced they
will offer their own behavioral targeting program in the future.
These are just a sample of the online advertising opportunities
available to small business owners. Transitioning your small
business online may be a smart move for many businesses but be
sure to do your homework before diving into these programs.
Before taking the leap to online advertising realistic goals
need to be established and strategies need to be developed.
Don't be afraid to consult a search engine marketing
professional for assistance if you need to. They will save you
money in the long run.
About the author:
Darren is located near Philadelphia and provides professional search
engine marketing and seo services throughout Pennsylvania and
New Jersey. If you use this article online please keep the
links intact.
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