NOW is the Right Time for the Right Time, Right Place, Right Message
Updates
New Clients
In the past six weeks we have added 3 new clients. Welcome aboard!
Google AdWords Agency Team
We were recently assigned a new Agency Team by Google AdWords. Not only is the new team located here in the Boston area, they have been incredibly proactive and have already added value to our PPC activities. We are excited to visit with the team at the Google offices in Cambridge in mid-November.
International SEO
We have continued to leverage our international SEO experience through providing custom training to Internet Coordinators in 12 countries for one of our clients. The training focused on a combination of best practices in Keyword Research, Copy Editing for SEO, and tailoring the information to the use of the client's own Content Management System.
Brafton Tailored News Feeds
This past summer we began working with Brafton, Inc., a company that provides custom news stories for websites (unique content) and uses its technology to provide fresh news feeds. Not only do we have two clients working with Brafton now, we are using the service ourselves - KoMarketing Associates' Online Marketing Industry News. Our next steps with our own feed are to integrate the feed onto our homepage, create a Google News Sitemap, and have Brafton submit our News pages to Google News editors for review.
Search engines like to provide fresh content to users, the engines will crawl sites more often that have fresh content, Google increasingly integrates news stories into its main search results pages, and each story has unique content that will attract search visitors fro relevant terms.
We have no financial relationship with Brafton, we just feel that they provide a useful tool in the battle for search engine traffic.
For those of us charged with generating more business (in our case, generating more for our clients), the current climate begins to raise concerns that advertising and marketing budgets will be scaled back.
It’s probably fair to say that advertising and marketing budgets contain the largest discretionary spending line items. Easy targets for cutting.
I was just reading an article written by David Warschawski, CEO of Warschawski, Inc., a PR & marketing agency in Baltimore, where he cited “How Advertising in Recession Periods Affects Sales”, a book published by American Business Press in 1979. David pulled the following data point out of the publication:
“When the sales of companies that cut back their advertising expenditure during the 1974-75 recessions were compared with companies that did not, results showed that companies that did not cut their budgets had increased their sales by more than 200% two years later, while sales from the companies that cut their advertising had barely increased 50%.”I’m betting that most of you reading this newsletter will think something along the lines of “that’s great, but our reality is that we need to keep our own budgets in line with our own projections. Reading that statistic isn’t going to affect what we do.”[Note: I could not find this book for sale anywhere.]
So, as the owner of a search marketing agency, I guess I am going to say “cut back everywhere else, not in search.” And I am going to say that. While that statement could be perceived as self-serving, the reality is that I love search engine marketing (both SEO & PPC) for some very concrete reasons:
- In what other medium can you interact with consumers and potential customers just at the very moment they are looking for what you have to offer?
- Search marketing is perhaps the most accountable promotional medium out there. Dollars invested can be traced to direct results (both SEO & PPC).
- A strong search marketing effort improves your entire online marketing efforts – site usability, site content, uncovering websites that can drive new business, and more.
- SEO efforts bear long-term results, similar to investing in a diversified portfolio that will grow as long as the overall U.S. and Global economies continue to exist.
As you are considering your various advertising/marketing options – Direct Mail, e-Mail Marketing, Events, Market Research, PR, Print Collateral, Radio, Telemarketing, TV, etc. – it is worthwhile to think about how each compares to the benefits of Search.
Even before the current economic meltdown, I wrote two blog posts about this subject (back in February 2008):
- Why You Should Cut Back Search Marketing In a Recession - February 4th, 2008
- Follow Up On Search Marketing and Recession - February 14th, 2008
We are here, steady as a rock, to help you excel at using search engines to bring qualified customers & prospects to your door.
Best Wishes to You,
Andy
- Andy on Twitter & Stumbleupon
- Derek on Twitter & LinkedIn
- Joe on Stumbleupon
- Bill on Delicious, Stumbleupon, & Twitter
- KoMarketing on Delicious & Facebook
