Target the power of bluetooth and wifi technology to take a variety of marketing messages to consumers who are both nearby and looking to make a purchase.

Here’s a look at some of the key benefits/opportunities beacons have to offer:

• Location targeting: Beacons let you target users with messages based on their specific location.
• Mapping: The ability to “see” where consumers go in-store and attribute actions to these journeys – e.g. gauge how many buy a product after seeing promotional signs.
• Frequency: Measure how often people visit the same locations, how long they spend there and how these relate to sales.
• In-store messaging: Send promotional offers to people as they look through your store or business location.
• Guide users: With full beacon systems, you can guide people through entire shopping centres, stadiums, airports and entire cities.
• Gamification: Brands are using beacons to create treasure hunts and gamify the consumer process.
• Cross-selling: Target shoppers with related products, special offers and other purchases as they queue up to pay.
• Loyalty: Send loyalty rewards to people as they complete purchases.
• Customer recalls: Send promotions and other messages to people who leave without buying anything to entice them back into the store.

Location-based marketing vs proximity marketing

Businesses, especially retail and real estate, have been focussing immensely on location for the last decade. This is because reaching out to customers without being sure of the location is just digital marketing, which is not very effective for local businesses. However, marketers and business owners now realize that the targeting needs to be more specific than just GPS and geofencing. This is where proximity marketing steps in. Let’s understand in detail about their differences and when each one of them is useful.

Location-based marketing

Location-based marketing in simple terms means communicating with potential customers within a range. Let’s say, a coffee shop runs a campaign to introduce a new almond flavoured Cappuccino on their menu. Setting a location based marketing campaign would mean that all potential customers in the range of, let’s say 1 kilometer, are notified about the new coffee. This might also include reaching out to a user in the nearby ice-cream store.

This is done by calculating the latitude and longitude of the smartphone using GPS or cell tower triangulation method. It is hence defined as the kind of marketing that uses mobile to target customers in a particular geographical area.

Geofence is a virtual boundary which can range from over 50,000 meters to anything else. Ideally, for interactions above 80-100 meters, business owners must consider geofencing.

Proximity marketing

Proximity marketing however, is a more granular form of location marketing. For the same example discussed above, the coffee shop owner could decide to have a more targeted approach and reach out to customers passing his coffee shop, lets say in the range of 300 meters. This approach is more personalized and contextually relevant.

Proximity marketing is about reaching out to customers based on the accurate position and not a virtual geofence. This makes the communication more contextual and personalised.

Proximity marketing is recommended for highly targeted zones – within 100m of distance. Proximity marketing use-cases involve interaction with customers about a particular product, brand on a shelf, or any other similar application.

Understanding Proximity Marketing

Let’s consider an example of a retail store.

1. Beacons are deployed at the storefront or in aisles with ongoing offers.
2. These BLE beacons transmit signals in its range. BLE signals are a combination of numbers and characters.
3. The signals are detected by any Bluetooth-enabled smartphone, in the transmitting range.
4. The smartphone then sends the ID number attached to the signal to the cloud server.
5. The server checks the action assigned to that ID number and responds accordingly. It could be a notification about a discount, or a product launch, a feedback form or just a greeting!
6. These notifications will then drive customers to a relevant form, a webpage or a markdown card (a Beaconstac card creative which works as a substitute for a website).

Driving your advertising performance through artificial intelligence.

We remove the silos to allow media buying across all channels to occur seamlessly and through one strategic lens, with programmatic and direct buying converged into a single function, and media performance measured and optimized holistically. 

Automated bidding on advertising inventory in real-time, for the opportunity to show an ad to a specific customer, in a specific context.

When anyone clicks on a web page that has advertising space that is configured for programmatic advertising, the publisher of the page puts up an ad impression for auction in an ad marketplace. The ad marketplace then runs an auction among advertisers interested in displaying an ad to that specific customer that just click on the page. There may be many advertisers competing in this auction, and whichever one ultimately is willing to bid the most wins the auction and then their ad is displayed to the customer when the page loads.

Many small businesses aim to optimise their advertising and marketing expenses. Posting an advertisement to a broad audience is ultimately inefficient, as the target market of any business is a small subset of the broader population. Likewise, posting physical flyers around a university campus or other public area does not ensure that the target market will see the advertisement.

One solution is using an advertisement platform that allows for the specification of the target market.

Facebook, as an example, prompts advertisers to specify the demographic information, hobbies, and interests of the users who the advertisement will be displayed to. A small business producing specialty hiking equipment may choose to advertise to individuals in rural areas that are known for hiking locations. Such a business may designate hiking as one of the interests, and search for a younger demographic that has not already developed loyalties to certain outdoors brands. This scenario illustrates how crucial narrowing one’s target is in maximising the efficiency of advertising. Still, there are only so many active users on Facebook, and that number is subject to further decrease as other social media platforms become more prevalent.

There is, of course, a better solution to targeted advertising that can reach users who do not frequently use social media platforms where targeted ad spaces are offered. Programmatic advertising is an even more efficient means of responding to this challenge.

One form of programmatic advertising is real-time bidding, enabling advertisers to purchase relevant ad space within a few seconds.

Whenever an individual clicks a website with ad space that allows for programmatic advertisement, a bid for that ad space occurs on the ad marketplace. Thus, advertisers can autonomously out-bid their competitors to show advertisements to users who fall within their target audience.

Another form of programmatic advertising is programmatic direct. This form is slightly more manual than real-time bidding, as advertisers can hand-pick where their ads will appear.

They also know exactly what they will be paying, whereas the price advertisers who opt for the real-time bidding option will pay depends on the existing competition for the ad space, the customer, and the financial capabilities of the specific companies that are bidding for space.

The most obvious benefit of programmatic direct is that brands preserve their image by ensuring their advertisements are only displayed on websites aligned with their core values, beliefs, and essential purpose.

For instance, a brand that is selling electric vaporisers may not want to appear on a website hosted by a company that sells cigarettes, as electric vaporizer companies could be the primary competition for cigarette brands.

Another advantage is that a brand may see an increase in its revenue by having positive associations with a cause that many are passionate about.

Protecting the environment is one social issue that most agree on. Some brands have even seen success based on their environmental responsibility and goal to minimise all individuals’ carbon footprints alone. Tesla, a company that manufactures electric cars and solar panels, recently released an impact report that detailed both its overall carbon dioxide emissions and the carbon emissions that were saved as a result of the use of its electric cars.

Many brands have started to use recyclable and reusable packaging to appeal to environmentally conscious customers and to reduce their environmental impact. Plastic is a huge stressor on the environment that many companies insist on using, as it is durable and inexpensive when compared to its alternatives. Thus, a brand that boasts its environmental responsibility may want to use programmatic direct to appear on pages about the record carbon dioxide levels, or about various ocean cleanup efforts.

Aside from preserving a brand’s image and boosting their revenue by supporting popular causes, brands can also ensure their ads appear on pages that reflect their core values. This ties into the relevancy of the host website.

If a company’s core values are the promotion of health and peace of mind to the general public, that brand may prefer to appear on yoga and meditation websites that include similar messages in their “About” pages.

There are many advantages of programmatic advertising over the manual selection of advertisement space to purchase.

First, programs are not limited by the same physical needs that humans are, such as sleep, free time, and illness.

Another advantage is that businesses can spend less time on the process of finding relevant ad space and more time on the appearance and message of the ad itself. Graphic design is a time-consuming process; however, a graphic that is eye-catching and meaningful may be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful advertising campaign.

Another benefit is that businesses may be able to reduce the size of their marketing departments. Of course, humans still create advertisements and select the websites to advertise on if programmatic direct is chosen.

However, employers can save on the salaries and benefits of the employees who would have had to scrounge the Internet for websites with available advertisement space.

In the future, programmatic advertising may be used to sell television spots; it has applications in many industries that cannot be ignored.

Overall, both real-time bidding and programmatic direct are methods of programmatic advertising that will increase the efficiency of a business and maximise the number of potential customers a business can reach within the business’ designated advertising budget.

Real-time bidding is a completely automated method of bidding for and purchasing ad space, while programmatic direct allows advertisers to select the websites on which their ads will appear. Both forms of advertising allow businesses to target a specific user, instead of aiming to appeal to a general audience in the hopes that the target market will be represented in that audience.

For programmatic direct, businesses can choose to be associated with causes that are meaningful to them and their customers, while avoiding causes they do not support.

Though programmatic advertising may seem futuristic, it is relevant technology that small and large businesses should take full advantage of.

Programmatic advertising puts businesses in direct contact with individuals who could become loyal customers and facilitate the growth of the business through another powerful method of advertising: word of mouth.

Looking for a new way to advertise your business?

Thinking about using programmatic platforms?

While you may or may not have heard about it before, programmatic advertising is the way of the future. Programmatic platforms are changing the advertising landscape. They’re also changing the way that advertisers get their message out into the world.

Advertisers need to understand the many benefits of programmatic ads if they want to stay competitive. Unfortunately, if you’re unfamiliar with programmatic ads, it can be hard to understand exactly what they’re all about.

Luckily, we’re here to help. Below we’ll tell you about 7 big ways that programmatic advertising is changing the advertising industry.

1. Advertisers Are Embracing Automation

One of the top features of programmatic advertising is that it offers an automated way to buy advertising. Real-time bidding (RTB) functions as a large majority of this automation and allows for the automatic auctioning and buying of ad space.

Automated algorithms work to offer an ad to a user at the right time. It will be shown when they’ll be most likely to react to it in a positive way and when it will be most relevant to them. Advertisers can set requirements for placements and for their audience. Users can be targeted in a variety of ways including the device they use, personal interests, and their location.

With programmatic advertising, ad campaigns can be strategically managed and maintained. Ads will be shown only in the right places at the right times. This is in direct opposition to the traditional advertising approach of reaching as many people as possible every time.

2. Real-time Insights Are Influencing Business Decisions

Programmatic ads also offer advertisers the ability to see real-time insights and user data. Not only are bids managed in real time, but advertisers will always have full visibility into what is going on with their campaigns.

User data can be gathered and segmented automatically based on devices used, channels, and demographics. This extensive data can help predict possible pitfalls with a campaign, stopping it from continuing if necessary. It can also help advertisers find patterns that will allow businesses to make better decisions with future campaigns.

3. Ads Are Becoming More Personalized

With programmatic advertising, there’s never been better personalization and targeting available. Better targeting features and automation are helping advertisers to reach the exact people they need to reach at the right time. This allows businesses to more easily target people who are likely to take action, buy a product, or convert.

It’s important for a business to know who their target audience is when creating an advertising campaign. Advertisers can target users based on location, demographics, search terms, and other data. Because of this, advertisers who have a very specific customer base will be able to reach them more easily than ever before.

4. Advertisers Are Gaining More Control

Programmatic ads also offer more control for advertisers. With the increased amount of transparency, advertisers will have more control over the entire process. While much of the process will be automated, businesses will have more control over the type of people they reach and their goals.

Programmatic advertising campaigns are more transparent. They allow advertisers to see what types of customers are seeing their ads, what sites are being reached, and exactly what they’re paying. They’ll be able to tweak things to exactly the way they want them and will never be kept in the dark about how their ads are performing.

5. More Cross-Platform Advertising

Programmatic ads are also encouraging more cross-platform advertising. Programmatic ads appearing on all types of devices from smartphones to computers to TV. The rise of programmatic advertising is helping advertisers to pursue an omnichannel approach and ads are being optimized for each platform.

These days, people access the web from many platforms and devices. Programmatic ads can be used to help automatically determine where an ad fits best and where it will be most effective. This will help ensure that advertisers are always putting their message across on the right platform. They won’t have to simply hope they made the best choice for their ad location.

6. Advertisers Are Increasing Their Reach

Programmatic advertising can also help advertisers to have a wider reach. They’ll be able to discover new audiences through the use of advanced targeting and real-time bidding.

Programmatic advertising works to get an ad in front of the best possible person across many platforms and devices. It allows you to move beyond a few select advertising spots to get an ad to its best possible placement. With advanced targeting features and the use of “look-alike audiences”, it can be even easier to find the right type of person to show an ad to.

With programmatic advertising tools, advertisers will have a wider reach than ever before. They’ll ensure that they’re reaching the people who will respond the most positively to their message.

7. Increased Advertising Efficiency

Due to the many benefits of programmatic ads, advertising campaigns are becoming more efficient and effective than ever before. With improved targeting features, real-time bidding, and insights, programmatic advertising is helping businesses reach their ideal audience. This is being done in an automated way and with the fewest steps possible.

Many advertisers want the best bang for their buck and don’t want to rely on guesswork or a mass advertising approach. In this case, programmatic ads improve the process and make a much more useful choice for businesses.

Making the Switch to Programmatic Platforms

The advertising industry is always going through changes. However, programmatic advertising may end up being one of the most impactful of all. If you want to experience more success with your advertising campaigns, it may be time for you to get on board with programmatic platforms.

Need help with your advertising strategy? Contact us today to learn more about what we can do for you.

SEO vs PPC: What’s the Difference?

Are you confused about the difference between SEO vs PPC? Check out this guide to learn about the differences.

Did you know that Google handles over 3.5 billion searches per day?

It is most probable that you landed on this site through a google search or a series of them. Imagine how many people are doing so at this very moment worldwide.

The number is so big thus it is brave wanting Google to notice your company.

If you are on this site, then it means that you are interested in marketing your business through search engines.

There are two ways to go about it, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC). Read on to understand critical aspects when determining SEO vs. PPC.

Why a search engine

The world we live in today is pretty much run by the internet. Therefore, for your business to be relevant in the digital marketing world, it must have an online presence.

Create a website and advertise your products through it. This way, you will attract customers that would have otherwise remained inaccessible.
SEO vs. PPC.

You have probably encountered Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click in the online marketing world. You may think of the two are similar due to their functions but they happen to be very different tools.

They mainly differ in where listings appear on the search results page and how traffic is acquired.

Within The Locality

If you are a business owner, high chances are that you want to target local customers. Well, At least for now. To do this you need to optimize the local search.

How you go about it is different for SEO vs. PPC. Use location keywords to increase your chances of being among the localities that pop up is a consumer is searching for similar products.

Make sure that important information like business name and address is the same in all platforms.

Site Traffic

There are two major types of site traffic. 

Organic Traffic

Every time that you type into Google search bar, there are links that pop up. These, are known as organic results. They come up due to the similarity of content.

Now, traffic that comes from users finding your link among these results is the organic traffic. The probability of someone following on your link is pretty low if it does not appear among the first three. Therefore, you must be patient if you decide to pick SEO. Search Engine Optimization falls under this category.

Despite, the time factor it happens to be the most valuable traffic source and most sought after by buyers. Maybe if you are patient enough, you will be able to get more traffic at a cheaper cost per head.

Instant Traffic

As the name suggests, pay per click is chargeable.

However, it is instant. All you have to do is run advertisements on google and your site will appear among the first in Google Search results.

This major difference between SEO and PPC prompts you to now have much is time worth to you.

How much is the extra time saving your company?

Pros of Using SEO

Several ways in which you can improve your website using SEO. They include blogging and on page optimization. 

Organic traffic is not really free as it costs time and effort. Which implies capital, but other than that, there are no charges. It’s definitely more cost effective. 

Below are the advantages of using SEO. 

Credible Image

Most users tend to ignore ads and look for organic results. This will have a positive impact on your brand as you will have a credible image.

Awareness

The more time it takes for an organic site to gain a following, the longer it is to an internet user. If you have quality content, then there is nothing to worry about.
With time, keywords leading to your website will begin to pop up.

Your services might stick with the customers as opposed to sites that appear out of nowhere

Return on Investment (ROI)

This type of traffic has proven to have better returns on investments as opposed to the paid alternative. What PPC has to offer?

Now let’s look at some advantages of having a paid traffic plan.

Top position on Page

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, position on a page is crucial. Being on top of the page guarantees that most users click on your site.

Advertisements

With PPC ads, you have more space to market your brand. Make sure to add important information like location, pricing, and call outs.

Planned Finances

If you are considering paying for your advertisements, then it is wise to know figure out how much you are willing to spend daily on marketing.

To what level is business dependent on this? And can your online customer cater for this expense and more? Are some of the questions that you need to ask yourself beforehand?

Speed

How agile is your business? Any small business owner trying to stand out in the online marketing world understands that speed is a currency.

PPC gives you an economic advantage over your competitors. How so? You can be the first to market a certain product and benefit from the sales before your competitors catch up.

What Not To Do

Now you have understood the differences between SEO and PPC and what impact they have on your enterprise.

Let’s look at some crucial don’ts. Read keenly as they might make all the difference.

SEO

Avoid over-stuffing your page with keywords. Filling your pages with keywords won’t make it pop faster. Besides, the search engine is interested in quality content

Don’t use negative keywords. Avoid having duplicated texts in your website. Search engines are looking for content that will help the users. Having the same data twice will only weaken your game

PPC

Pick targeted keywords over generic ones. Monitor your ads to make sure that that they are actually getting conversations.

Avoid using negative keywords. If you do so, you will end up talking about what you are not selling instead of advertising your products.

Make the Best Choices in Digital Marketing

Advertising your business online and going the extra mile of improving its visibility to the user is bold and objective. At the end of the day, all you want is to grow your business and boost sales.

Be sure to take time and decide what best works for you, SEO vs. PPC.

For more information on beneficial online tools, check out this page.

The Key Types of Google AdWords Campaigns Explained

Google AdWords campaigns come in a range of flavors. We take a look at the key campaign types and what they involve in this handy guide.

Google process 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year. That’s a lot of people using Google. For advertisers, this is gold. But if you are going to advertise with Google, you must know the differences between all their Adwords campaigns. Not all of them are the same and depending on your business type, audience, and budget, one will be better for your business than the other. So which one should you use? Well, you’re in the right place because we’ve broken it all down for you. Ready?

Everything You Need to Know About Google’s AdWords Campaigns

Google has six different types of Adwords campaigns. According to their website, they are:

• Search Network with Display Expansion (previously known as “Search Network with Display Select”)
• Search Network Only
• Display Network Only
• Shopping
• Video
• Universal app

The reason why there are so many is that they each work a little differently. And depending on your business, audience, and budget, one will better for you than the other. Let us explain what each of these campaigns is so you can choose the right one for your business.

1. Search Network with Display Expansion

The most popular Google advertising campaign is “Search Network with Display Expansion.” It reaches the largest amount of people and the widest range of audiences. However, it’s not necessarily the best if you want your ads to reach a specific group of people. Ads in this campaign appear in two different networks: the “Search Network” and “Display Network.” These are essentially two groups of websites, one determined by search results and the other by what Google chooses depending on the data they have about your business. When a business chooses this campaign, they have to choose relevant SEO keywords, create ads, set a budget and set bids. Then, the ads will essentially run themselves. Before the current campaign, this was known as “Search Network with Display Select” or SNDS and it only displayed ads on websites that were in Google’s search network. Now, however, the campaign also displays ads on web pages where they predict interested audiences are even if they’re part of the search network.

2. Search Network Only

The “Search Network Only” campaign allows businesses to display text ads on Google’s search pages only. This means your ads will not show up on websites unless they appear on Google’s search results. However, this campaign also gives advertisers more features in their ads. For instance, advertisers get “Callout extensions,” which is an extra line of text on the bottom of their ads. Another feature is “Call extensions” which allows advertisers to place direct phone numbers on their ads. The “Search Network Only” campaign is excellent for those who wish to promote specific products or services.

3. Display Network Only

“Display Network Only” is a campaign that displays ads on web pages, videos, and apps. Google has more than 2 million websites in this network and it can still yield a lot of results for advertisers who know exactly where they’d like to place their ads. With this option, advertisers can choose specific websites to display their ads In this campaign, advertisers also can choose a “Marketing Objective” campaign or a “No Marketing Objective” campaign. The first one focus on marketing initiatives (increasing brand awareness, generating leads, visits, impressions, etc.) and the second one focuses on promoting specific products or services.

4. Shopping

“Shopping” campaign ads only show up in the “Shopping” section of Google. You might’ve visited this section before when you typed in specific products into Google’s search bar. This option is geared toward marketers who wish to promote specific e-commerce products. By displaying all e-commerce products together in one section, shoppers can find specific products more easily and do product comparisons much easier as well. If your company is having a sale or any special promotions, this is a good campaign to use. With the “Shopping” campaign, advertisers must set up a Google Merchant Center account first. Then they put in all the information they want and Google will create the ads for them.

5. Video

The “Video” ads campaign is pretty straightforward. You pay Google to display ads before, during, or after videos on Youtube and other Google partner sites. This is an excellent and effective option if you have lots of video content to promote. In addition, you’re given three options on how you want to display your video ads:

• In-stream ads display ads before, during, and after the video but the viewer can skip them after five seconds. The advertiser is only charged if the viewer watches the whole ad or more than 30 seconds.
• Video discovery ads display ads on the screen but the advertiser only pays if the site visitor clicks on it.
• Bumper ads are six-second ads that cannot be skipped by viewers.

6. Universal App

If you’re an app creator, developer, or advertiser, you would like the “Universal App” campaign. This campaign takes whatever information the advertiser puts in and creates the ads for them. All the advertiser has to do is enter the text that they’d like to display, set a budget, and start bidding. Once that’s all done, the campaign will promote apps across various Google channels. These include Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, and many other partner websites. Universal App ads are designed to drive customers to download app.

Get Behind the Power of Google

When it comes to online advertising, everyone knows Google is a powerhouse. And one of the main reasons for why they’ve been so successful with advertisers so far is because they know not all businesses are alike. They understand how different businesses work and what they need. At Felicity Jane Digital, we try to do the same by listening to all of our clients’ needs. If you would like personalised help with your company’s online marketing efforts with Adwords, feel free to look around our website or reach out to us directly. We’re confident that we can help you find an advertising solution that fits your needs and budget.

What You Need to Know About How Google Adwords Works

Are you new to using Google Adwords? Discover everything you need to know about how Google Adwords works so you can get the most out of it.

So, you’re looking to draw some attention to your website. With almost 2 billion websites live at the moment you’re reading this, that isn’t as easy as creating a great-looking site or posting to social media. While those are effective marketing strategies, they don’t deliver fast results. Instead, you may want to consider using Google AdWords — now known as Google Ads — to deliver new leads. But if you’re new to the platform, the whole process can be quite confusing. Not to worry! From uses to bidding and best practices, we’re walking you through how Google AdWords works.

What to Know About AdWords

Before you can harness the power of this awesome platform, you’ll first need to understand what makes it such a great choice for your campaign. The biggest advantage an AdWords campaign has over an organic campaign is speed. It can take months for your organic SEO to have an effect! Comparatively, AdWords works almost in an almost instant fashion. Furthermore, using AdWords guarantees your business a spot on Google’s homepage. And it doesn’t stop there, either. You can use the Google Display Network to advertise on sites your customers are already on. Finally, AdWords is such a great platform because of how affordable it is. A business of any size with any budget can take advantage of AdWords — no matter how small your budget may be.

How AdWords Bidding Works

Ad placement and keyword strength are determined by a bidding process. While this may sound intimidating, it’s actually quite simple. First, you’ll set a budget for the month. Note that you can adjust your budget at any time throughout your campaign. Next, enter a keyword you’re interested in. Note that this can be a partial keyword or even a complete phrase. Then, Google will present a list of options of both exact and similar options. Each keyword will have a price based on how popular it is. Let’s say you’re advertising an Italian restaurant. ‘Italian restaurants’ could be of a lesser quality than ‘Italian restaurants Sunshine Coast’ and thus, would cost more. Positioning is also influenced by ranking, which Google determines by multiplying your maximum bid and the quality score. If that sounds complicated, don’t feel too bad. It can be tough to understand without trying it yourself. You’re encouraged to adjust around your budget and explore the bidding process to get a better feel for how the ranking process works.

Best Practices for Your AdWords Campaign

There are several things you can do to ensure your AdWords campaign goes well. One of the best things about AdWords is that you only pay for results, so targeting specific engagement actions can influence your cost. You can select pay-per-acquisition, pay-per-phone call, pay-per-conversion, and more. Once your campaign has started, be sure to check your analytics early and often. Since AdWords allows you to adjust your campaign on the fly, increasing or decreasing your spending can influence the outcome.

How Google AdWords Works: Final Thoughts

Whether you’re looking to get digital or foot traffic, AdWords is a great platform for businesses of any size. Knowing how Google AdWords works can help you spend less while getting more results. AdWords encourages experimentation, so don’t be afraid to test new strategies out. Are you looking to boost your business’ digital presence? We can help! Get in touch today and let us know what you’re looking for.

7 Reasons Your Business Needs to Be Using Adwords Marketing

In an online world full of clutter, few digital marketing strategies can make you stand out more than Adwords marketing. Not convinced? Read these 7 reasons why your business absolutely needs to be using Adwords!

Google owns 71 percent of the total search market share. Google AdWords is one of the most effective ways to reach these searchers. If you have ever wondered, “should I use Google AdWords,” the statement above sums it up and makes it clear why this is so effective. However, if you are still wondering why investing in AdWords marketing is such a smart investment, you can learn more here.

1. Google AdWords Increases Customers and Leads

Google Analytics is considered one of the best tools for lead generation. If you set up campaigns properly, it provides the potential to send extremely targeted leads right to your website. With Google AdWords, you can also focus on people who are actually searching for what you offer. The ad you create can include your businesses services and products, which means you can keep refining your searches so only those who want to purchase your services or products are led to your website.

2. Measurable and Accountable

When you utilize Google AdWords, you can see exactly how your ads are performing – any time. Unlike certain offline marketing efforts, you will be able to see how many people have viewed your ads, clicked to visit your website or clicked to call you. You can also see the precise number of sales your website has received directly from the ads. With this type of advertising, you have the ability to drive much more than clicks. With this effort, you can attract more customers by driving qualified, new website traffic. This results in an increase in foot traffic, phone calls and eventually, sales and profits.

3. No Click – No Cost

While many people aren’t aware of this, Google AdWords provides an extremely cost-effective method to reach customers who are ready to make a purchase. This is done by targeting the right services and products to the right audience. You only have to pay for using Google AdWords after someone clicks to actually visit your site, purchase your product or call you. The PPC – pay-per-click – model is the ideal option if you want to only pay for quality, qualified leads.

4. It’s a Flexible Marketing Platform

Anyone using Google AdWords on a regular basis will tell you it’s a very flexible marketing platform. It is a sustainable option for all sizes and kinds of organizations. As a result, you can turn internet traffic on and off with this system. This platform is also compatible with many other software systems and marketing platforms. For example, you can download your campaign data and analyze it with Excel spreadsheets. You can customize your campaign to focus on a specific online user or target people in different locations. You can even target people using various devices, and those on different websites that are owned by Google. Another flexible option is the budget you set. Determine how much you are willing to spend, and then set this for your advertising. You can set daily budgets, and limits, as well as dictate the amount you are willing to spend on clicks for certain keywords.

5. Receive a High Return on Your Investment

Unlike other types of marketing strategies, you only have to pay for the ads people are actually clicking on. After you have optimized your Google AdWords campaign, you can begin seeing a high ROI. This usually isn’t possible with other marketing efforts. However, you should remember, this can take time, and you have to figure out what approach best suits you and your business. To get a better picture of what is providing the best results, you need to keep testing and tracking your campaigns. Google AdWords is ideal for this because it is transparent, and the information needed is readily available. When you find parts of your campaign that provide a good ROI, you need to focus your budget and efforts on these areas. If there are certain parts of your campaign that are costing you money, eliminate them.

6. Achieve Fast and Transparent Results

As mentioned before, with Google AdWords you will receive easy-to-understand reports and results about your campaign as soon as it goes live. The dashboard will provide you with all the information needed, related to each of your campaigns, such as the number of ads clicked, the keywords entered by visitors to your website, the cost of your clicks and more. As a result, Google AdWords is a transparent system that doesn’t take you long to learn to use or navigate.

7. Tap into Large, Quality Traffic Sources

Google is one of the largest companies in the entire world. Each day, Google processes more than 40,000 searches per second. As a result, it’s able to send your business a large amount of traffic each day if you have the budget to pay for the traffic. Google takes pride in displaying relevant ads and content to those searching through their services. They continue to change and update their algorithms to produce the most relevant search results and ads available. This offers a positive effect on your business if you are taking advantage of Google AdWords advertising. The fact is, the people sent to you by Google are more likely to become actual customers, to opt-in to your email list, request information or take another action, than other visitors.

Should You Invest in AdWords Marketing?

This is the million-dollar question. However, as illustrated here, AdWords marketing offers a plethora of benefits. So, when answering the question of “will Google AdWords help my business,” the answer is a resounding “YES!” While Google AdWords is a great way to increase site traffic, you can also find out more about direct and organic search on our website. Or contact us to learn more about starting your own AdWords campaign.

Understanding the Dynamic Relationship Between SEO and Digital Marketing

SEO and digital marketing can work hand in hand in helping your business become a visible, lucrative venture. Here’s how they assist each other.

What’s the difference between SEO and digital marketing? How are they similar and what can they do for your business? Digital marketing is a growing, projected to grow into a $306-billion industry. With more and more businesses in need of a better online presence, digital marketing becomes a need. SEO and digital marketing go hand in hand since both use a lot of similar functions and skills. Most digital marketing efforts include core SEO tactics to their strategy. You can say that the relationship between the two is collaborative. Let’s discuss the relationship between digital marketing and SEO further.

How SEO and Digital Marketing Work Together

A lot of people think that SEO and digital marketing are the same. The truth is that they’re two separate things. SEO experts have the knowledge to make websites better through organic search traffic. Digital marketing uses electronic media to improve the company’s exposure. Digital marketing specialists partner up with SEO Experts to help in their advertising campaign. They use SEO as a tool to attract more customers to the businesses they’re promoting. SEO is an important aspect of digital marketing. It’s one of the many tools used in digital marketing. Some of the other strategies used in digital marketing include:

• Email marketing
• SMS marketing
• Online advertisements

These marketing strategies become greater when coupled with SEO strategies. That’s why the latest trends lean more towards the integration of digital marketing and SEO techniques. If the trend continues, it won’t be long until the two merge together. Businesses in the past thought SEO was enough to gain an online presence. But with the growth of social media and mobile devices, it now takes more than that to reach your market. To become more competitive, you need to use digital marketing alongside SEO strategies.

SEO and Digital Marketing Integration

The strategies involved in SEO changes all the time. The reason is that search engines like Google and Yahoo update their methods to rank sites. The most recent changes involve incorporating digital marketing into the mix. The new strategy rising from this trend is Search Marketing Integration (SMI). It’s the product of the search engines’ progress toward perfecting the ways to measure website value. The main criteria they use are content quality and relevance. Digital marketing and SEO overlap to revolutionize the way you approach marketing. It combines the best practices and strategies of both. That way, you have an edge over your competitors.

Common SEO and Digital Marketing Collaborations

SEO is a must in a lot of digital marketing campaigns. The SEO approach has changed to become more holistic over the past years. It collaborates with digital marketing disciplines such as:

Social Media Marketing

The growth of social media marketing spiked these past years. Businesses spent approximately $19.3 billion in 2017, making it one of the most prominent digital marketing strategies. When integrated with SEO, the social shares help generate natural backlinks to your website and content. Make an SEO strategy that fits your social media program to get the maximum benefits of SEO. The social shares help you know whether or not your strategy works. If you’re a small business, try focusing more on local social media marketing. Google places a lot of value on locality, and social media platforms give you a place to interact with your local communities. Combine SEO and digital marketing strategies to help your brand gain more followers and trust. Consider keeping up with local events to stay relevant with your community.

Content Strategy

As search engines improve their algorithms, it becomes clearer that content is king. It’s an important SEO strategy to make websites rank higher in the search engine results page. Make a strong content strategy that combines with SEO to raise your business conversions and increase your brand’s authority.

Paid Search

If you’re using paid search, you need to incorporate SEO strategies to make the expense worthwhile. SEO can help optimize the landing pages, the proper keywords, and content strategy that improves paid search. When you combine SEO and content marketing, you can gain organic traffic more.

Conversion

If you combine SEO with digital marketing conversion tactics, you can get more organic traffic to your business. Make the best customer experience by using SEO best processes to give them a good content journey. Ensure that you use SEO and digital marketing to understand your users and adjust your website accordingly.

PR and Brand Mention Strategies

Your PR team can collaborate with SEO experts to help with brand mentions. It helps increase your business’s online presence and make it more visible to search engines. You shouldn’t take online reputation management for granted.

Website Development

Your website’s optimization determines your online presence. SEO is important to web development because it helps optimize load times and mobile responsiveness. Web developers can learn a lot from SEO experts especially when they need to adapt to the newer technologies. When collaborating with web development, SEO makes it easier for you to have a user-friendly website with clear navigation and optimized Meta tags. It helps your content have a balanced keyword density while ensuring it’s relevant and consistent. SEO’s best practices help your marketing campaign have unique and non-plagiarized content without stuffing it with keywords.

Discover Digital Marketing and SEO Benefits Today!

Combining digital marketing and SEO can help your business stay competitive and relevant. The relationship between these two is collaborative, but you can say that SEO is a subset of digital marketing. SEO allows you to use the required keywords and best practices to help you rank higher in search engine results. It works in sync with digital marketing through content creation that you can share on your website and your social media platforms. It helps in the digital marketing campaign effort that gives your business the exposure it needs to gain customers and sales. Putting these strategies together help you serve customers better and make them come back for more. Using both for optimization helps build brand loyalty and customer retention. Not sure how to implement them together? Do you need SEO and web design help? Contact us today and we can help you out!

6 Local SEO Strategies for Traffic and Lead Generation

Using local SEO strategies can help to grow your traffic and boost lead generation. Keep on reading to learn effective SEO techniques that work.

Did you know that if somebody looks for you on their phone, and finds your business, they will most likely visit or call you within the next 24 hours? This is why your local SEO strategies need to be airtight. It’s very easy to do your own SEO optimization these days. But it’s incredibly difficult to do it correctly. First of all, you need local SEO strategies that work in 2018, not 2011. So let’s take a look at how to win the local SEO war, and turn the traffic into leads.

How to Instantly Beat 50% of the Businesses Out There

You’re not going to believe this, but there is a free, 15-minute task that can put you above half of the businesses out there today. Make sure Google My Business has your most recent business information. This is so incredibly simple and completely free to update. And yet, 50% of surveyed businesses admit that their Google My Information business is either inaccurate or incomplete. This is basically gift wrapping valuable local SEO traffic to competition that is more on the ball. So take the five minutes to ensure that Google has your most up-to-date and accurate business address, hours of operation, products or services, customer reviews, and photos.

Don’t Mistake PPC for SEO

A lot of business owners will buy paper click PPC ads to try to help their local SCO strategy and optimization. These are actually two completely different things. It seems counterintuitive, you are buying these ads from Google, so you would think they would help your organic ranking with Google. There is no data to prove this. Try to think of it this way: PPC is paid traffic that you buy through bidding on keywords. SEO is earning organic traffic by optimizing keywords. PPC ads are a great way to show up in local searches and send traffic to your website, to hopefully convert into a qualified sales lead. Which is great. Just don’t assume it’s going to help your organic rankings.

How to Convert Paid Clicks Into Leads

Contrary to popular believe, you don’t half to spend the most money to have the most success from your PPC ads. You can see better results by being a bit smarter and more strategic. Let’s say your competition is outspending you, so they have the number one position when people Google your business. That number one spot is not guaranteed to get the click from the searcher. More people will click your ad if it’s better written, and speaks directly to their pain point. Your ad copy needs to strike in emotional cord with them in the headline, then inspire them to click with a compelling offer in the second line. And if you do that better than the other guys, people will choose your ad over theirs. Bonus Tip: One of the biggest mistakes that businesses make in their local SEO strategies is sending their traffic to a generic landing page. Make sure you set up a dedicated landing page for each PPC campaign, so you can:

• Measure the true performance of this ad, and make adjustments
• Match the messaging and offer to exactly what the actual ad said

If the ad promised a 14-day free trial, but the landing page makes no mention of it, you will lose the click because the reader will assume they’re in the wrong place. or that they’re the victim of a bait and switch offer.

How to Turn Your Blog into a SEO and Lead Goldmine

A blog should be the most important part of everybody’s local SEO strategies, but it is one of the most miss used tools in the world of digital marketing. The SEO value of your blog has never been higher. Google wants organic content like this. In fact, websites that have a blog have 434% more indexed pages than non-blog sites.

Write About the Right Things

Clearly, the first thing you need to do is write about things that will generate the most traffic. Most businesses today right about themselves, and promote their various events, products, services, or promotions. People don’t care. They want to click on and read something that has actual value to them. So you need to find out the questions they need answered and the problems that are keeping them up at night. That’s what you should blog about. Go on social media and sites like Quora and Reddit to find the questions that people are asking about your industry. Now take those exact questions, word-for-word, and turn them into block titles. These are actually what you call longtail keywords. Because they are the long questions that people are asking Siri, Alexa, and Google. You want your business’ blog to be the answer to these questions.

Is Your Blog Set Up to Generate Leads?

A lot of businesses struggle with a blog that generates pretty good traffic, but produces no leads. That’s probably because they are not giving their reader a clear next step. Your reader had a question, came to your blog, read the whole thing, and got an answer. Now you have their trust in their attention so you need a call-to-action (CTA) to turn them into a lead. That CTA could be to:

• Fill out the lead form on the right
• Click to read more blogs
• Join our mailing list
• Leave a comment

You can’t waste this click. You’ve captured their attention, now you need to capture their contact information so you can get them to buy today, or nurture this lead with re-marketing efforts. If you ask them to do nothing at the end of a blog, that’s exactly what they’ll do. And then they’re gone forever.

Ready to Talk About Your Local SEO Strategies

Felicity Jane utilises her background skills in psychology, marketing, IT, graphic design and urban and regional planning, to bring real world solutions to clients. How can she help you? Click here to find out.

How can we help you with your LOCAL SEO?

The importance and value of SEO are well documented. Local SEO is, however, yet to be fully exploited. In fact, only 44% of businesses have laid claim to their Google My Business local listing. The few who employ local SEO strategies are raking in huge profits. A Recent survey shows local searches make up 46% of all Google searches with 78% of all local mobile searches resulting in a purchase. We help businesses, like yours, to enjoy the benefits of all manner of SEO strategies. Our aim is to help you see your enterprise rank high in search engines (Google, Bing, e.t.c) and, online directories (Citysearch, Yelp, e.t.c). Local directory marketing boasts of the highest conversion rates of any advertising tool. The rate is as high as 50% in some popular directories. So, according to the statistics mentioned so far, good local SEO will help you i. Increase the number of visitors to your site. ii. Convert close to half of the visitors into customers.

How Do We Help Your LOCAL SEO Rankings?

Before working with any business, we usually consider two things. i. Have you claimed your local listings? If the answer is yes, we go to part two below. If it is no, we help you claim the listings. Local SEO begins with controlling your local listings. ii. Does your business have duplicate listings? If the answer is no, we roll out the main SEO process outlined below. In the case of duplicate listings, however, we get rid of the additional listings. Duplicate listings confuse both customers and search engines. The confusion affects ranking and consumer trust. When these two issues are resolved, we roll out the

Main steps of our SEO strategies.

Baseline And Future Goals.

We understand just how far good Search Engine Optimization can push a business. The first step is to determine where you rank and where we can take you in about five months. The idea is to rank you as high as possible. Good local listing, for example, exposes you to the 71% of clients who look up businesses before visiting them. One thing to understand is that some unchangeable factors may determine just how far you rank. One such factor is industry centers. When similar businesses in a locality occur clustered together, Google interprets the clusters to be an industry center. The closer a business is to such a cluster, the higher Google ranks it. No amount of content and local SEO strategy may change that fact. The two, however, still guarantee you of better ranking despite the fact.

Content Is Still King.

Localized content speaks to local clients in a manner they can associate with. Nothing builds trust faster. We carry out extensive keyword research and use our experience with Google’s search algorithms to help your rank. Below are other strategies we employ to help your content convert.

NAP Synchronization

NAP (Name Address Phone) synchronization is another approach we use at this stage. The NAP in your listings should match what you submitted to Google and any other body. Having different NAPs for your business across different forums has the same effect as duplicate listings. Finally, the appearance of NAP on every page of your site also helps content to convert.

Data Aggregators

Data Aggregators are entities that compile data on local businesses from various sources. They rationalize the data to come up with clean and accurate representations of the business environment. The aggregators are important because they are responsible for availing the data to search engines, at a fee. We help you submit your data to aggregators. The result is more control over the type of data available to search engines.

Structured Data Markup/ Schema Markup

Schemas are fairly new SEO advancements. Only 31.3% of websites are using schema markup. They are technical and why you should use an expert for your SEO needs. Schemas are codes that help Google spiders analyze a page quickly. Google algorithms have a preference for sites with the schema. Employing them helps our clients rank higher than their competitors. For purposes of professionalism, however, we only offer our services to one business per category in any given region. This way, we ensure our clients enjoy solid leads over the competition.

Encourage Reviews

You can never have too many citations. Reviews form the most important citations. 72% of people trust online reviews. They give them the same validity as a personal recommendation from a trusted friend. The more reviews you have, the better your rank. Good reviews are the main objective. This means that your business should deliver exactly what is promised. We give advice on how to offer services that attract positive reviews. 52% of clients are moved to make a purchase by positive reviews. No matter the importance and value of SEO, product delivery remains key if you are to succeed. Get people talking nice about your business, and more people will come. Our SEO strategies will only bring clients to you, maintaining them is entirely up to your delivery. Good reviews and content will eventually help build your business a vast amount of backlinks. Links back to your site are ranking gold. They improve ranking faster than even the black-hat tricks out there.

Continued Health Analysis Of Progress

When all is in place, we check how well you rank. SEO is a race that more and more people are getting into. You may rank well today and lose the position tomorrow. This fact has led our company to continually assess the progress of clients. It is not always just a matter of improving your ranking. The idea is to maintain the high ranking. Google, for example, continually updates its search algorithms. What works today may not work tomorrow. Our team of experts is always on the lookout for any such developments. This is another reason why you should avoid trusting your computer guy with your SEO needs and why you should use an expert. Finally, the entire process of SEO and local SEO strategies is a long one. The above steps are not meant to highlight the entire process. Instead, it is an overview of the main steps in a way intended to educate and build your confidence in the process. We would love to help you rank in the LOCAL map pack .. get in touch jane@felicityjane.com.au