SEO/SEM Explained (in Non Geek language)

Back in the good ol' days, just having a website that worked was enough for any business. "Yes, we do have a website," business owners would say proudly. "You can visit us at www.mycompany.com."

Today, having a website is just the beginning of successfully competing in this new, confusing online world. Companies looking to gain new customers via the web are bombarded with sales pitches promising strange new things like optimization and keyword traffic.

Navigating the web world is not as confusing as it looks if you know a couple of basic terms and what they mean.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of making your website easier for search engines (Yahoo, Google) to find. A well optimized website will appear in a higher position when a web user searches for your category of product or service. The process of SEO involves improvements to your website such as implementing keywords, tagging graphics, titling pages and putting good text content on your site. Search engines like these things and will have an easier time finding you if your website has them.

SEM or Search Engine Marketing is the process of marketing your website through paid online marketing. SEM can take a lot of different forms, but the most common are keyword searches, banner advertisements and text ads. These types of marketing are sold either on impressions or by clicks.

Keywords are simply words that people may use to search for your product. For instance, "carpet" or "rug" would be common keywords used by people searching for a flooring retailer. Keywords can also include strings of words such as

"Palm Beach carpet store." Google Adwords is one of the best known keyword marketing services.

Pay Per Click means exactly what it sounds like, you pay for people to click on your website. Pay Per Click programs usually involve buying certain keywords. When a user searches for a keyword you purchased, your website is listed. If they click on your website, you pay a predetermined amount for that click.

Impressions are the number of people who see your ad message. An impression is not a click. It simply means your ad appeared on a page that the web user viewed.

Still confused? Stephanie Leffler from Networks Solutions gives some great tips in this four-minute You Tube video.

Discounts gone wild: why a great deal is not always great for your company

About once a month a coupon for Bed Bath and Beyond arrives in the RWA mailbox. If you’re female with even a tiny affinity for home goods, you know these coupons well. They’re big, blue and good for 20% off any one item. RWA staffers love them and universally feel dejected when we fail to redeem one on some cherished household item before the coupon’s expiration date.

The other day an avid BB&B shopper shared a little inside tip on our favorite blue coupons. “Expiration, smexpiration,” she says. You can use them anytime you like. The stores honor them even after they are expired.

Now we’re feeling even more dejected.

A coupon should generate excitement; here’s your special chance to save money on something you really want. Part of that excitement is knowing that you only have a small window of opportunity to act on this offer. If you realized that window stayed open 24/7, suddenly the excitement is gone.

Take Subway’s $5 Footlong offer. Twelve inch subs were just $5 for a limited time only. Apparently Subway has a broad definition of the term “limited” as months late $5 Footlongs are still on the menu. Now you even get a $5 concert ticket with your $5 Footlong.

Sure, everyone likes a deal, but what happens when your customers start expecting a deal all the time? If you use coupons too much or too long to promote your business, customers become conditioned to only shop when they have a coupon. Didn’t get a chance to use your coupon this month? Don’t worry, you’ll get another one next month. Suddenly your customers have adjusted the price they expect pay to a much lower level than before. A 12” sub for $5 is a great deal, but now that Subway has been running it for so long, will customers ever be willing to pay more than $5 for a sub?

Coupons and special offers work best when you use them sparingly. The “Once a Year” sale is much more enticing if you don’t have it every other month. A $5 off coupon is more valuable if your customers have to use it or lose it and if they know they won’t see another coupon for a long time.

Gotta run. Late for 2-for-1 martinis. Fridays only.

Finally! Coupons come to movie concessions.

No movie-going experience is complete without a tub of buttery popcorn nestled in the corner next to your armrest and an icy soda to wash it down. Lately, though, I’ve downgraded my tub to the economy-sized bag of puffed corn and started smuggling juice boxes and bottled water into the theatre. Shameless, I know.

I’m not alone, though. On my most recent theatre outing to see the new Ice Age movie (well worth seeing, by the way), I spied a fair number of oversized “purses” with box and bottle shaped bulges. One mother of four was a chiropractor’s dream. No woman could haul a purse that heavy without risking a herniated disk. She probably figured a visit to the spine guy was cheaper than a visit to the movie concession counter. She’d be right.

Someone at Sprint must have been listening to long-suffering movie patrons. This month Sprint put kiosks in 500 theatres nationwide (see NY Times article). Sprint users just scan in a code from their phone and the kiosk spits out coupons for free upgrades on concessions.

No more economy-sized bags. You can enjoy the big tub without spending big money. Now that’s worth going to see.

The experiential marketing experience

Over Memorial Day I enjoyed a little R&R in Tampa. After a lazy drive up the coast, our entourage stopped in at The Pier, a popular tourist destination. After stopping for a round of neon colored slurpies, we wandered outside and wandered right into an experiential marketing experience.

Washed up on shore at The Pier were giant-sized plastic bottles. Nestled in piles of sand, each bottle displayed a roomful of furniture. Weaving in between the bottles were a half dozen smiling people clad in matching t-shirts and distributing small plastic bottles with messages inside. The rolled up piece of paper cleverly stated that your home was sending you a message: “Get new furniture.” Where? At the new Ikea store, of course.

I’ve never been to an Ikea store and I don’t think my home really wants new furniture (I just gave it new kitchen appliances), but I was ready to check out the Ikea store anyway. Any store that can figure out how to put furniture in giant plastic bottles is well worth visiting. And, that is exactly what Ikea’s experiential marketing team wants you to think.

Getting prospective customers to experience a company’s brand in a non-traditional environment is the goal of this unusual type of marketing called Experiential Marketing. Like Ikea, many companies are finding that Experiential Marketing can successfully draw customers to their brands by engaging them in an unexpected manner.

Charmin discovered the power of Experiential Marketing when it put restrooms in New York’s Times Square during the holiday season. The “Charmin Experience” provided New Yorkers with clean, public restrooms courtesy of their favorite bath tissue. The “Charmin Experience” was so popular, one couple chose the restrooms as their wedding spot. The bride wore white Charmin.

You don’t have to build bathrooms in Times Square to launch an Experiential Marketing campaign for your company. The key is to determine who you want to reach and develop a way to get that person to experience your product or service first-hand. If you sell shoes, put a runway outside your store and hire people to walk the catwalk in your shoes. If you sell mattresses, take them on the road. Bring a bed to a well-attended event and offer a rest-stop to weary attendees.

Experiential Marketing is all about getting your customers to interact with your brand outside of your normal sales channels. So you just have to get out there and get creative. If Charmin can figure out a way to get New Yorkers to experience toilet paper, think what you can do with your brand.

Is that a rubber chicken or are you just happy to see me?

Most companies have a nice basket of flowers in the middle of their conference room tables. At RWA, we have a basket of rubber chickens. Visitors find them irresistible. Some play with them. Some giggle. Some just stare.

The reactions change, but there’s always a reaction. And, that’s the whole reason behind having a basket of rubber chickens hanging around your conference room.

We can’t take all the credit for the rubber chickens. Most of it goes to Jon Spoelstra and a great book that he wrote called “Marketing Outrageously.”

In his book, Jon sends rubber chickens to NBA fans that had not renewed their season tickets. Guess what? A lot of them renewed. Few people can resist a rubber chicken.

The rubber chicken is just one example of how to grab the attention of a hard-to-reach prospect. If your letters, oversized postcards and brochures have not hit the mark, lumpy mail is a great way to get a foot – or a claw – in the door.

Food is also a welcome diversion during the workday. Pack up a bunch of fortune cookies with a note saying “Today could be your lucky day, but you’ll never know why unless you call me.” Or, send a case of $100,000 bars with a message of “Making money can be this sweet.” I once met a party planner who sent a watermelon to 10 large companies about their summer parties. She booked eight of them.

Over the years we have sent custom labeled steak sauce, prescription bottles, helium balloons, pinwheels, miniature spaceships, foam fingers and even a sports locker to potential customers. They don’t always lead to a sale, but they are always remembered. And who knows… two years down the road your prospect may pick up the phone and call that guy who sent him that Eiffel tower made out of paperclips that’s still sitting on his desk.

You could be that guy.

What's in your website?

Not so long ago we used to encounter a fair number of clients without websites. Yes, hard to believe, but these companies didn’t even have a registered domain name. Today, finding companies without a presence in cyberspace is rare. Even mom and pop shops have websites thanks to do-it-yourself software and tech savvy teenage relatives.

RWA applauds this movement toward more online marketing. Now, if we could just get this movement moving in the right direction.

As more and more companies get websites, fewer and fewer of them get what they should from their website company. Sadly, most companies don’t know that a large part of their website is missing. They’re just excited that they’re out there in the worldwide web and what a pretty site they have!

I confess that I too was once easily misled by websites. I was only attracted to the flashy ones, the ones with pretty moving pictures, cool graphics and lots of neat sound effects. I shunned the sites with too much text and boring, static pictures. Over the years I’ve discovered that websites are like dates – a lot of the attractive ones don’t have much substance once you get to know them.

So how do you know if your website is just another pretty face? Take a quick look under the hood with this easy tip. The only tool you need is an online connection. Go online and go to your website. At the menu bar at the top of your screen select View, then select View Source or just Source

What you see may look like a language out of Star Trek, but you’re actually looking at the coding for your website. A lot of it you won’t be able to decipher, but in plain English you can see some interesting things.

• Page titles: These begin with TITLE followed by a description of the page. Page titles are good things.
• Keywords: These should begin with “keywords” followed by a list of words or word groupings separated by commas. Keywords are also good things.
• Text: The content or text on your website should be readable even in this strange Vulcan language. Text is a very good thing.

If your website is lacking any of these things, your website may need a makeover. The good news is that unlike many people, websites can change.

Finding the advertising medium that works for you.

I was asked to be part of a focus group conducted by a local newspaper last week. Like most newspapers, this local newspaper is looking for new footholds in the crumbling landscape of print publications. So, they invited a group of regular advertisers to share our opinions on advertising in general and newspaper advertising specifically.

After we all introduced ourselves, the moderator lobbed her first question.

“What advertising medium works most effectively for your business?”

As the only advertising agency in the room, I decided to keep my mouth shut. In my business, we use all different mediums. In general, I don’t have a preference for one over another. My fellow panelists certainly did, though.

Of the nine other advertisers in the room, no two had the same answer. The top media choices ranged from television advertising to search engine marketing to direct mail with newspaper, radio and outdoor advertising thrown in for good measure. The Yellow Pages even had a fan. Go figure.

Which just goes to show, there’s some medium for everyone. Unfortunately, you may go broke before you find it. So, allow us to lend a few key points we’ve learned about some mediums along the way.

Cable Television: Cable is an affordable way to get your business on television, but it is most effective in small areas or targeted by content. A local restaurant can buy one cable zone and effectively reach its target market of a few miles surrounding its location. A golf retailer can effectively target golfers by advertising in golf tournaments on cable.

Outdoor Advertising: Billboards, bus shelters and bus benches provide great navigators to your business. Turn here, left at the light or 1.5 miles ahead can make new customers from regular passersby. Outdoor ads are also effective for promoting short, repetitive messages. How many times have you seen a 1-800-INJURY or www.carcrash.com message while driving around town?

Direct Mail: Yes, a lot of direct mail winds up in their garbage, but not if your message is something they need and there’s something in it for them. We recently sent register boaters an innovative mailer offering a discount on polarized sunglasses at a local store. It worked swimmingly.

Search Engine Marketing: Paid online marketing options like pay-per-click offer fabulous tracking so you can see who’s clicking and who’s calling. They first have to be looking for what you are selling, though. SEM is great for getting driving people searching for chocolate chip cookies to your website, but sugar cookie buyers may never know you exist.

Obviously we can’t cover every advertising medium in just one blog, so stay tuned for future media reviews posted here.