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Archive for January, 2010

How does TV Advertising affect your PPC campaign?

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Here at Euston Digital we have found that an effective and efficient return on on investment can be achieved by running a Pay Per Click AdWords campaign in conjunction with a TV ad campaign.

The mediums work in tandem – TV advertising drives people to search online, and online adverts can raise receptiveness to TV advertising. And if you get it right, then 1+1 can often come to more than 2.

But there are a few things that you need to do to make sure your PPC campaign is capitalising on your TV Ad spend.

Budget
A basic one this, but TV ads can hugely boost both your brand searches, and general searches in the market advertised. You need to make sure your daily caps are set way in excess of any theoretical limit. It would be the worst possible situation for your TV spend to drive people to Google, only to find that the user couldn’t find your site

Use all search engines
PPC specialists tend to put all their effort into Google and give Yahoo, Bing and others require token attention. But the difference with TV adverts is that they tend to make less experienced users search online. And less experienced users are more likely to use search engines other than Google.

Position
It goes without saying that you need to make sure that you are in position 1 across all your brand terms. Many companies survive by picking up the search tidbits left by big spending competitors. A large advertising campaign will drive brand searches: others will try to capitalise on the users’ lack of experience by grabbing their attention high up in the SERPs.

Bidding strategy
Now is the time to be more flexible with your CPA targets and to get more aggressive on generic search terms. Your television ad spend will drive general searches in your market; its reassuring for searchers to find your ads at the top of the SERPs as well as on television. It makes them more likely to buy from you. Its worth raising your CPA targets in the short term to grab as much market share as possible.

Message: Be Official
To start with you need to make your brand name really stands out in the ad copy, so that users are sure that the company they saw on the TV is the same one that they’ve found on Google. Put the brand name in the headline of your ad, and make sure that you use official ‘TM’ signs to add a stamp of authority.

Message: Use your strapline
If your TV campaign has a strapline, then repeat that in the final sentence of your ad. It makes sure that users get the a consistent take-away from all your advertising. Again this adds reassurance.

Message: Try to be tailored
Continue to test tailored headlines. It might be that your TV advert does not have strong brand recollection; you need to continue to make sure your adverts reflect the terms that users are searching for.

Create a ‘product + TV’ ad group
If they can’t remember your company name, users will often search for you product + TV, in the hope that Google can find the people who have advertising on TV. For these keywords, it makes sense to create a dedicated ad group and to include a ‘As seen on TV’ message in your advert.

Use keywords from your Strapline
Some users will not be able to remember your company name, but may well search using your strapline. Make sure that you’re bidding on these keywords and consider them as ‘brand’ traffic.

Summary
TV advertising in conjunction with a PPC campaign can deliver strong ROI. But to make sure that you get the most from both, your PPC campaign needs to cover a lot more bases. For help on how Euston Digital can boost the returns from your Pay Per Click Internet marketing, get in touch.

Any comments, please leave them below.

Tags: PPC, tv advertising
Posted in PPC | 2 Comments »

Keep people on your website using video

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

As a market leading PPC, SEO and Social Media agency Euston Digital spend lots of time and money driving traffic to our clients websites.

But getting people there is just a small part of the marketing mix. Converting those visitors into customers are what distinguishes a good website from a great one.

We work with our clients to improve their website conversion rates. An important way to do this is by using moving images and audio. That’s why we’re very pleased to announce the launch of our website video service.

We can create and deliver short videos, and place them on your website. We’ve used these videos to boost website dwell times and retain eye-attention thanks to our imaginative creative.

Here’s a short showcase:

Our video film projects range from 30 second clips to much larger projets. If you’re interested in finding out more about web video production and whether your website would benefit from having a tailored video, get in touch.

Tags: conversion rate
Posted in Conversion Optimisation, Web Video | 1 Comment »

How to use LinkedIn to market your business

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

Social Media Marketing is the new media buzzphrase of the moment. The Internet is starting to burst with opinions and ideas of how to use social media to market your business.

We’ve not been afraid of that either, with our basic guide on how to use Twitter.

However, when people talk about social media they’re usually referring to Facebook, Twitter and sometimes MySpace.

The social network that is often overlooked is LinkedIn.

The traditional approach to LinkedIn is to use it to promote your own personal business interests and connections, often as a career tool. But the power of this business focused social network can be bring leads, sales & revenue too.

LinkedIn is a bit different

Whilst other social networks are good at reaching focused demographics, interest groups or the mass market, LinkedIn is a place to find specific individuals. For this reason, it makes more sense for sales of low volume high value products where decision makers are harder to find.

Using your employees’ contacts

LinkedIn is all about individual people reaching out to other specific individuals,. As a starting point, you need to utilize your and your employees network contacts, From there, you need to move onto people that they’re connected to (2nd degree contacts). And so the process will continue.

But don’t be Spammy

Every time you reach out using LinkedIn will will show your real, professional, and company name. Therefore its important not to turn off those contacts – or in other words, don’t be spammy. Every move you make, every contact you reach will be visitible to your networks, so bear that in mind so as not to appear over zealous.

How to get going

1. Find an ‘open networker’

An open networker is someone who has linked to as many people as they possibly can. They have messaged everyone in their network, and every new contact, to expand their contact list as much as possible.

To find an Open Networker (or LION – LinkedIn Open Networker), search on LinkedIn for ‘LION’. When you find one, invite them to your network. If they accept, you then have access to their 1st degree and 2nd degree contacts. Sometimes LIONs include their email address in their LinkedIn profile name, making it all the easier to invite them to your network, even though you’re not  connected to them at all.

You can also find open networks on TopLinked.com.

2. LinkedIn Answers

Anyone can ask a question on LinkedIn Answers. Anyone can answer. It allows you to interact with people who are not in your network, which of course helps to make new contacts.

If you ask a question many people can answer you. Once the question closes (after a few days or whenever you decide), you choose the ‘good’ answers. Of these “good” answers you then choose a ‘best’ answer.

The person who gave that answer gets an ‘expertise point’ that shows in their LinkedIn profile.

You could therefore use LinkedIn Answers to display your expertise.

In addition, people sometimes ask “where can I get a…” types of questions, often with regard to specific services. If you have a product or service that fits, you can answer these questions with a link to your website.

Sometimes it might be that you can offer a small answer, and then say ‘for more info’ or ‘for my full answer see…’ and then link to your blog, where you can answer the question in full.

3. Get recommended in ‘Services’

Another method is to get as many people in your 1st and 2nd degree networks to recommend you for a particular service. Some users will scour services to find a supplier. The more times you’ve been recommended, the greater the ‘reach’ of those recommendations. And the more positive your business looks.

4. Find ‘buyers’ in a organisation

Since every profile in a business includes a job title, its much easier to reach out to a specific person in order to try and sell to them. Most people will be connected to others in their organisation, so if your first degree contact is someone in a business you’re trying to target, the chances are that you can use their contacts to find the right individual..

5. Building Links

LinkedIn used to offer ‘followed’ links, which were an important method of link building as part of your Search Engine Optimisation program.

These days however, these links are either ‘no followed’ or redirected. Nevertheless, they can be an important source of referral traffic to your website. Links still get clicked on after all.

Make sure all employees have links to your website in their profile. Make sure the links are visible and can be crawled by the search engines by making all profiles include the “show website” feature. You can do this in “Edit My Public Profile“. Click “Full View” and also “Websites”.

That’s it

Often overlooked as a source of new business, LinkedIn is a powerful tool to reach specific buyers in organisations. Make the most of your network contacts using the techniques above.

If you want Euston Digital to help you with your Social Media marketing then get in touch. Any comments please leave them below.

Tags: Link Building, linkedin, SEO, Social Media
Posted in Link Building, Social Media | 1 Comment »