Friday, October 12, 2012

The Wonderful World Beyond Search | Renegade Search

Here at DTC we focus on search marketing. It?s our bread and butter and what we were brought up on. Search marketing is what we know best and it?s what has made us successful. Since we started DTC, the world of online marketing has changed and it will continue to change, so we decided it would be best that we expand our service roster and become experts in other facets of online advertising. Let?s take a look at some of the opportunities beyond search that can help your business get in front of your ideal online consumers.

First though, let?s look at Search Engine Marketing.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is typically seen as PPC or SEO. A user goes to a search engine and types in query. The job for marketers is to make a client?s site relevant to a search query and try to get as many question asking searchers to become decision making?customers.

Well, Search is a Little More As the Crow Flies...

Search marketing only hits potential customers at one juncture ? when they are looking for something specific. X marks the spot, but we all know that the decision making process begins well before someone enters this type of search or finds the treasure map in the first place. And this gap is precisely where other modes of online advertising can have a big impact on your bottom line.

Display Advertising

Display advertising is how internet advertising was born, though it?s come a long way since the days of annoying flashing banners. Today?s display advertising is sleek, targeted and accountable. Through Google?s Display Network (GDN), advertisers can precisely target a site or even a specific placement on a website and show ads in this position to a targeted audience, such as to Chicagoland consumers.

Display ads can be a simple image ad, a flash animation ad, or even a video ad. These ads are then easily targeted and managed through Google?s AdWords system and all your interaction metrics are easily analyzed through Google Analytics. The budgeting and bidding system for display ads is just as friendly as the standard AdWords search side, so managing your ad spend is quite simple.

Facebook Ads

Facebook ads are a great way to deliver a targeted message to various constituents of your audience. You can target your audience through their interests, gender and location and deliver a custom message to each defined segment of your market. You can tag your destination URLs and track your progress through Google Analytics to better understand the effectiveness of each ad approach and accompanying image.

Facebook & Social Networks

Facebook and other social networks are a great way to interact with your customer base and keep your brand in front of your audience. Keep your customers loyal and up their average lifetime customer value through actively engaging your audience where they already are. Use apps and contests through Facebook and promote them through Twitter. Answer customer questions and quell your customer concerns and you can be more proactive and go above and beyond in your customer service while monitoring where your brand stands in the eyes of those who matter most: your existing customer base.

Comparison Shopping

If you?re running an ecommerce website, comparison shopping engines could be a great way to get your products in front of your customer?s eyes. Bargain shoppers often use comparison shopping engines to find the best deal or to find merchants that have great customer service reputations. Most of these engines operate off of a pay per click pricing model, so you will only incur advertising costs when someone comes to your site.
Compairson Shopping Engines

Remarketing

Keep your brand relevant to a customer after they have already left your site and keep your warm leads sizzling hot. Remarketing works by displaying relevant ads to people who have already visited your website. You can define your remarketing audience so that different ads can be displayed to audience members based off of their interaction with your site. Deliver separate ads to those who have been to your site without completing an action and deliver a different offer to those have made a purchase in order to increase repeat business.

Search Retargeting

A new frontier in internet advertising, Search Retargeting allows you to show ads to people who have expressed interested in other sites similar to yours. Introduce people to your website and brand and you may just be able to sway someone to use your website over a competitor?s site! The problem with search retargeting is that the spend requirements are going to be way out of most small to medium sized business?s advertising budgets at this time, but this technology is forward thinking and should become more accessible over time.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is an easy way to stay in front of your existing customers? eyes. Promote your sales and specials to a very targeted audience that has already given you permission to contact them and see your sale increase. This channel is often neglected, but it shouldn?t be since your email list is often composed of your core consumers. Use Google?s URL builder, and start testing different email approaches and gauge response rates and ROI.

Review Sites

Depending on what type of business you?re in, review sites like Yelp can have a huge impact on your business. This does not mean that you should pay to advertise on these types of review sites, but they are free to monitor, and there is nothing wrong with asking your loyal and happy customers to add their opinion to the mix. These types of sites are great influencers to new customers and they can really help illuminate what aspects of your business may have opportunities for improvement.

To Wrap Up

With so many ways to reach and interact with your target market there is no shortage of options for online advertisers. Discovering which channels will work best for your business and customer base will take time and extensive testing, but getting out there and finding new ways to reach and interact with your customers will help you keep a step ahead of your competition. While search marketing is still one of the best ways to effectively reach people during a critical moment in the buying cycle, there are many other steps in that cycle that should not be neglected. So, how has your business gone beyond search in its internet marketing strategy?

Source: http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/wonderful-world-beyon-search

watergate mlb pregnant man outside lands 2012 lineup beloved ufc results water for elephants

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.