Small Business Internet Marketing Blog

Search has many, many sides or angles to it. This means that search marketing does as well. As a search amrketing professional, I should probably spend my time heralding the benefits of search instead of highlighting its problems, but the fact is that I am an optimist - at least in SEM.

Businesses fail consumers and search engines, consumers fail businesses and search engines, and search engines fail both consumers and business. This defunct system is also one of those downward spiraling phenomena that struggles to ever get itself turned around. (more…)

by Jack Loechner, February 12, 2009

According to research from Webvisible and Nielsen, reported by Marketing Charts, though 63% of consumers and small business owners turn to the internet first for information about local companies and 82% use search engines to do so, only 44% of small businesses have a website and half spend less than 10% of their marketing budget online.

The research finds an accelerating trend toward online media for local search. However, the report says the study uncovers a significant disconnect between the way small business owners act as consumers vs. the way they market their businesses online.

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Perhaps you have heard from recent studies that email continues to be the most popular Web activity for Americans, followed closely by search.  Both channels can be perfect ways to meet customers in their natural online habitats.  But there’s a way to make your search and your email work even better.  How?  Use them in tandem; use what works.

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Early this mroning my Google rep emailed me a well thought out and developed presentation that I strongly believe is worth sharing. The PDF is full of PowerPoint-like slides discussing the tremendous long-term value of search marketing in an economic downturn, such as what we are experiencing right now.

Although Google has a strong bias towards argumenting the value of search marketing, the underlying message of this document is absolutely accurate and worthwhile. When times get tough, marketing studies consistently confirm that while ROI suffers, those advertisers who pull out of or scale down their marketing efforts have lost market share by the time the economy rebounds. Any seasoned marketer or advertiser knows that the battle of market share is significantly won and lost during economic downturns, not in flourishing economies.

This is a true business principle for the ages, not nervous talk. Check out these essential points:

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As a PPC specialist by trade, I plead for users to choose the right. The right side of the screen that is. At the same time, as a SEO enthusiast and practitioner I cheer on the left side of the screen, the real reason people flock to search engines. Users are looking. Beyond that, they search intently with purpose. Because the act of searching typically transcends casual electronic lolly-gagging, accurate data reflects the general perception about where people are clicking.

As Gord Hotchkiss so clearly debates (7/17/08) the deeply psychological programming of the human brain, making human interaction with machine meaningfully predictable, the answer comes. No surprise. Bummer. I like surprises.

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Browsing is perhaps two parts aimed search, plus three parts waiting to be blindly surprised. Discovery on the other hand, I would argue, is four parts aimless search and one part purposeful exploration. Seem like a concoction of misrepresented and confused concepts? Sure, I planned it that way - to get you to think about what users are doing out there in their flat-paneled universe.

While browsing is far more common among in search, it leads to far less satisfaction. Browsers often get up from their computer feeling largely empty, having accomplished little if anything. They are largely without meaningful purpose. They are actively being passive. Like passer byers at a county fair, they are hollowly walking past adventurous opportunities utterly dominated by their practical nature. They pretend to themselves and their audience that if the right attraction comes along they will bite on it. The reality however, is that one side of their brain is starving for fun, stimulation of entertainment and the buying of goods. The problem is that marketing to this bunch of browsing consumer yahoos is waiting for something that the other side of their brain will never allow.

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Don’t despise the words “test” or “testing” in the context of your search marketing campaigns.

Thank goodness search engine marketing for small business is not like traditional print advertising. For anything professionally printed, there is a saying that “We didn’t release it, it escaped,” or something to that fashion at least. Usually this is said because the end product could have benefited from perpetual optimization and improvement. Once in print, it cannot be altered. New versions can be released, but the older versions live in infamy. The problem is that at some point the ad needs to go to print, and by then the avenue for publishing, whether it be a newspaper, magazine, mailer or anything else, has been determined and at least partially paid for. There is no turning back; something needs to printed, so it might as well be your latest version of the ad.

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