PPC search engine marketing, like Google Adwords, attracts targeted users based on what they type in the search box at a particular moment. This approach provides you with greater flexibility to generate demand while building brand awareness and expanding your brand reach. On the other hand, PPC social media, such as the Facebook and LinkedIn programs, deliver your ads based on users’ fixed profiles.  While this is good for direct response and branding initially, your ad could potentially appear over and over again to the same person, causing ‘ad burnout’ and a conscious disregard for its contents.

So what’s a marketer to do? You have a couple of simple options. First of all, coordinate the content of both your PPC search ads and PPC social media ads. Pairing display ads with search ads has been proven to maximize returns for online advertising and marketing campaigns. Secondly, create several ads that may be similar in content but not identical. Switch up your ads so that users may start to recognize your brand but that the content remains relevant and interesting to them. And above all else, test media and track results always!! You will want to know exactly what is working so that you can replicate it. Additionally, you don’t want to inadvertently cause a disruption with a change you did not track and/or test.

If you need help with your online advertising call Industrial Web Solutions at 1-800-399-9859.

Although Yahoo and Microsoft experienced small gains of just under a quarter of a percent, Google appears to be the horse too far out in front to catch. Performing well in each of the top three search engines’ sites is definitely your all round best approach. Depending on your specific target audience groups and where you find they are conducting their searches – Google, Yahoo or Bing – you may find that one engine performs better for you than the others.

Market research is the only way to determine which engine provides you with the greatest returns. This is an important consideration particularly if you are investing in pay per click search engine marketing. These campaigns can quickly eat up your budget if they are not reaching the right people and getting them to respond. If you elect to run a single campaign in a single engine, your best bet is probably Google, considering its market share of 11.6 billion searches. But you may find that the initial investment to conduct the market research so you know for sure where your greatest opportunities lie saves you money in the long run.

Search engine use is still a big part of the user experience. Optimizing for effectiveness in both organic search and paid search engine marketing programs ensures you manage your investment properly as you set the stage for achieving your branding, lead generating, or sales goals. Even if your target audience represents less than 0.01% of the total 18 billion monthly searches, you still have the opportunity to get the attention and response from a healthy portion of those potential 180 million targets. The challenge is to do your homework and optimize so the numbers work in your favor. Follow the example of the search market leader. Google continues to do its homework and month over month it comes out way ahead of the competition.

Before there was an online there was print, billboard, and broadcast television. Advertisers have benefitted from the positive results of display ads for years. Now the results have moved to online. But the critical point made by Batten, in my view, is the relationship between the elements of your marketing mix. Batten reminds us to consider the role played by each medium: “…display is primarily for driving awareness and “filling the funnel” whereas search is better for driving immediate consideration and direct response.”

When developing your marketing strategy it is imperative to design and implement initiatives that work together to deliver the results you desire. For example, your display ad works to promote your brand in the consciousness of your target respondents. They may appear as part of your search marketing mix, industrial directory online, targeted third-party websites, and print. Your print ads have a double duty to promote your brand and get respondents to take action. If you have the budget for television or radio, these work primarily for branding but can also be effective at getting respondents to take action. Your website, one of your most important strategic considerations in your overall marketing mix, greets respondents with highly focused information that aids in their research process as well as providing them with an easy way to reach out to you. Your social media and blog posts reinforce your brand and demonstrate your broad knowledge regarding what you offer. Your text ads work to get respondents to take immediate action to buy something or at least start the buying cycle by contacting you. All direct marketing campaigns, including email and direct mail, should coordinate with the message delivered in your other initiatives and be designed to get respondents to take action.

So you can see how each element of your marketing mix plays a specific role that works collectively with the other elements to:

• Establish awareness
• Nurture the relationship
• Get the desired response

Through understanding and careful planning, your marketing initiatives can work effectively together to ensure you keep leads in the pipeline and make the sales you need to increase your profits and grow your business. Consider the ‘zero multiplication factor:’ anything multiplied by zero equals zero. Don’t let a careless decision eat away at your budget or your profits. The next stages after careful planning are timely implementation, close management, and consistent tracking and reporting. Eliminating elements that are not working is not necessarily the way to go to fix a broken strategy. Using verifiable data, you will benefit from fixing the broken elements so they begin to work effectively within your overall mix.

For help with your marketing strategy, call Industrial Web Solutions at 1-800-399-9859.

With costs up along with orders, manufacturers and suppliers will benefit greatly from intelligent spending and strategic planning to ensure they are poised for receiving their share of the new business pie. “Rapidly rising material costs,” stated a representative from Food, Beverage & Tobacco, “are putting extreme pressure on profits.” A Plastic & Rubber Products representative similarly commented, “Customers are rebuilding safety stock levels of inventory, and also trying to buy ahead of material price increases.” As a result, the “market continues to get stronger month over month,” stated a Transportation Equipment representative. He added, “Recovery is faster than anticipated.”

To keep up with the unexpected pace and effectively manage costs, savvy global industrial marketers and local industrial and commercial manufacturers, suppliers, and service providers, are engaging in search, website updates or complete redesigns, local marketing, direct marketing, and paid online advertising initiatives in order to take advantage of opportunities to generate revenue, particularly new business.

With the growth of social media, mobile, and local marketing in particular, along with the algorithmic alignment of search, social media, and third-party websites to identify and rank web pages, manufacturers like Autoswage and industrial suppliers like Woodward Compressor Sales are seeing lower costs for lead acquisition and greater return on investment with strategically planned and closely managed internet marketing initiatives. Having implemented website expansion and redesign respectively in conjunction with search engine marketing and social media, these companies are leading the pack in their industries with page one Google Rankings for their principle business terms. Combined with strategic internal business initiatives, companies who act in a timely fashion and invest wisely are seeing great returns.

For information about internet marketing or website design contact an Industrial Web Solutions web marketing specialist at 1-800-399-9859.

Chances are you are not the only company out there that sells the types of products and services you offer. And you may not be the only company that sells products from a specific manufacturer. Or you may be competing with companies who sell comparable products and solutions from other manufacturers. In short, you have competitors. And the only collateral you have to convince your targeted online audience groups to choose you and your solution over your competitors is your online web content, particularly that which appears on your website.

So the first step is to add content development to your website design/re-design budget. How much you need to add to your budget depends on a few factors:

• Do you have existing content that can be cost effectively re-worked? I say ‘cost-effectively’ because sometimes existing content is so poor that it would be faster to start from scratch than to try to fix badly written copy or digital images and document attachments of poor quality.
• Are you completely lacking in content and in need of everything including compelling, search engine optimized sales and marketing copy, case studies or white papers, digital images, and/or digital attachments?
• Does our branding need to be updated to a 21^st century look and feel?
• How much research will be required to develop your content? Is it easy for you to assemble the source materials and present them in a usable format to your content development team? Can the content writer get what she needs from you during a conference call with you and your team?
• Do you need to purchase digital images or have digital images taken by a professional photographer?
• Would you benefit from video development? Or do you have videos that require editing or accompanying text?
• Are you willing to invest in the long term benefits of search engine optimization? Content that is easily and accurately indexed and delivered in organic search results by the search engines, particularly Google, opens up all kinds of opportunities for business development like expanding your brand reach and recognition, lead generation, and sales.

There is a lot to consider because web content includes:

• Copy (sales and marketing text, all informational text, strategic calls to action, online forms)
• Images (photos, illustrations, graphical designs, CAD drawings, etc.)
• Branding (logos, graphical design)
• Document Attachments (case studies, white papers, downloadable brochures, sell sheets, pricing, MSDS, etc.)
• Videos
• Audio
• Hyperlinks (clickable links that provide access to your web content)

The important thing to remember is that your targeted site visitors are there to interact with your web content because they have an expectation to fulfill: to find and generally acquire what they are looking for. The relevance and quality of your web content impacts what they will do next – click away or engage further. If you fear or loath the thought of web content development speak with a professional – not your shrink but a web content development specialist!

I invite you to read a great blog post by Ron Jones for ClickZ on Web Content Development 101 for some ideas to get you thinking accurately about your web content.

If you’re ready to speak with a professional, give Industrial Web Solutions a call at (800) 399-9859.