Go Mobile With Your Pay-Per-Click Ads
Microsoft has predicted that by 2014, mobile Internet usage will overtake desktop. The time is now to maximize your mobile campaigns, and both Google and Bing are evolving to help you achieve better ROI.
6 Huge Google Changes That Affect You
A leadership shuffle at Google has catalyzed a host of big changes in the way it delivers search results and the products Google offers. We've summarized the six biggest shifts for you in this must-read article.
B2B Video Marketing Strategy
You've seen the success that B2C companies like Old Spice and Geico have had with video marketing. Think your B2B business can't leverage video the way these B2C giants do? We think otherwise.
5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Email List
Think growing your opt-in list has to be a huge chore? Try these five quick wins to get more sign-ups out of your current interactions with customers.
Getting Buy-In for SEO
Is your boss not sold on SEO yet? Show her the value of this tried-and-true Internet marketing stalwart with these killer arguments.
Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2011
2-3 p.m.
Video is one of the most effective ways to reach your company’s audience online. Through online video marketing, you can engage and interact with customers, increase traffic to your website and add more personality to your social media networks.
Join Yvonne Rayburn, Director of Online Communications for Webbed Marketing, and me, Steve Kozak, Director of Video Production for Fathom Online Marketing, this Wednesday, August 24th from 2-3PM EST to learn how to best utilize video and social media to build brand awareness, expand your audience and connect with your customers.
In this webinar we will discuss:
• Tips for video marketing
• Utilizing video to increase traffic to your website
• Amping up your social media presence with videos or video contests
• Ways to make video more fun
• How to measure the effectiveness of your video marketing efforts
Don't miss out! Register for this fun and informative webinar today!
No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome. »Did you know there are more than 750 million active Facebook users, and people spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook? With the community growing as much as it has, Facebook advertising is growing exponentially every single day. According to The Financial Times, the price of advertising on Facebook has increased 74% since last year! With this drastic increase in average cost per click, more and more competition appears to be entering the Facebook space. Is your company missing out?
At Fathom, we have managed multiple Facebook advertising campaigns and have discovered some very good and very bad elements.
Let’s face it: Google AdWords is becoming more and more saturated with competition and your costs are going up. You’re working eagerly to try and optimize your quality score, find new keywords to bid on, test new landing pages, etc., but costs continue to rise. You might want to branch out and try Facebook Advertising to compare ROI.
Facebook offers many benefits over Google AdWords:
- Demographic targeting: Facebook gives you an extremely targeted way to reach your audience which does not involve bidding on individual keywords like Google
- Reach: According to Facebook.com, 70% of users are from outside of the U.S. This just puts into perspective that Facebook is just as popular out of the United States as inside of the US! No worries, though, if you want to reach a small audience, such as 10 miles within a DMA or a specific zip code, this can be done as well within Facebook.
- Brand awareness: While you can definitely generate leads and sales on Facebook, the main benefit from advertising on it is easy building of brand awareness. By targeting friends of fans, you can easily double or triple your amount of “likes” within weeks. Then the key is to continue to re-engage with these fans by promoting specials, news, and updates on your wall.
- Sales and Lead-Generation: Generating leads and sales on Facebook can be quite tricky. If you are trying to generate more sales, be sure to offer specials exclusively to Facebook members and track it separately than other marketing efforts. As far as generating leads, consider building a landing page within Facebook and testing it vs. sending users to a landing page with an external URL (outside facebook.com).
Just like any other pay-per-click advertising platform, Facebook could help improve your ROI by fixing several issues:
- Setting monthly budgets: Facebook currently only lets you set a daily budget, as opposed to a monthly budget. This can be an issue if you happen to be having a really good day as far as clicks go, and you run out of budget. If you were able to have your budget set at a monthly level, you would avoid potentially missing out on clicks, leads, or sales.
- Using ad scheduling: Unlike Google AdWords or Microsoft Adcenter, the Facebook advertising platform does not allow you to automatically turn off ads on certain days or during certain times. This is unfortunate, as you could be exhausting your budget very early on in the mornings when your best conversion rate happens to be later on in the day.
- Conversion tracking: It is impossible to tell which campaign/ad converts better within Facebook’s interface. In order to track conversions, you must use a 3rd-party tracking system, such as Google Analytics.
- Cannot a/b test images and ads within same campaign: Unlike Google, Adcenter, or even LinkedIn advertising, you aren’t able to a/b test ads or landing pages within the same campaign. You have to duplicate the campaign and targeting in order to test different elements, which can lead to a mess of campaigns that are difficult to manage.
Interested on advertising on Facebook or learning more about our Pay-Per-Click capabilities? Contact us today and receive a Free Online Marketing Assessment.
No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome. »Check out this week’s episode of “Fathom That?!” on mobile e-commerce, or m-commerce, in response to viewer Brian Greenberg, who requested more e-commerce optimization tips.
Matt Mesenger, Fathom’s E-commerce expert, invites Jonathan Levey, a mobile website specialist, to talk about how you can optimize your mobile website for e-commerce. You’ll learn 5 easy tips to maximize your e-commerce profits through mobile devices.
If you have something you’d like discussed in a “Fathom That?!” episode, please share that with us! And stay tuned for next week’s episode to learn more about online marketing.
No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome. »
We all know that inbound links can have a big impact on a website’s organic rankings. However, getting those links – especially from authoritative sites – becomes the difficult part.
The sheer amount of content that exists on the Internet makes it difficult to create truly original pieces that others will want to link to. But, if you can find the right place for your content to go, you can turn an old idea into something new, shiny and attractive.
By “find the right place for your content to go,” we really mean locate guest blogging opportunities.
HubSpot recently posted a great article entitled, "How to Grow Inbound Links with Guest Blogging Opportunities." In it the author talks about why this practice has become so popular, and how to make it work for you.
To start things off, consider this: guest blogging is one of the most credible ways a website can build authoritative and keyword-rich inbound links. In addition, it can help build brand authority, foster relationships with others in your industry, and establish you/your company as an expert source of information.
So how exactly does guest blogging work, and how can you make it work for you?
The strategy is simple:
- Write a stellar piece of content that is relevant to a particular industry/group of people.
- Find people with authoritative/influential blogs in the industry who would be interested in your information.
- Send a personalized proposal asking them to post your content on their site and include a link back to your site using keyword-specific anchor text (that part is key).
Although it sounds easy, the tricky part is actually getting the right people to be interested in your information and willing to post it. It’s essential to make sure you’re targeting the right kind of blogs, as well as giving a personalized pitch to each one.
To get you started on your search for guest blogging opportunities, I’ve summarized some of Hubspot’s best suggestions for finding authoritative blogs in your industry:
- Think about top industry blogs. Do some research to determine which blogs are most influential in the industry.
- Use Google Blog Search to find blogs that rank high for the keyword phrases you want to target. In most cases they are viewed as more authoritative in Google’s eyes, which means their inbound link to your site will have more weight.
- Do your research. Most blogs have contact/about us information, as well as social media icons that will offer additional insight into what makes them tick. Get to know the blogs you are going to pitch to before asking them to do you a favor.
- Turn to social media. Twitter offers several directory searches that can help you find relevant people who are involved in your industry. You can scan their profiles for specific keywords, as well as get a measure of follower count/influence. Google+ also has a search feature that allows you to filter by different categories so you can find the exact people who may be interested in your content.
Guest blogging is a great way to connect with your target audience and build powerful inbound links to your site. Start digging around to find some valuable opportunities in your industry today.
Image provided by jmoneyyyyyyy on Flickr.
No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome. »
