Marketing

Is your community Web site Economic Development friendly?

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Last night I had the opportunity to give a brief talk to the GCEDC – Grant County (Wisconsin) Economic Development Corporation monthly meeting in downtown Livingston, WI. I gave them a checklist to help them make sure their community web sites are Economic Development friendly. As you may suspect, this checklist can be applied to community and economic development sites anywhere. In fact, many of the items should be implemented on every web site.  Obviously, we talked in more detail about most of the items.

That said, in addition to the nice dinner served by Rebel’s Northern Exposure restaurant, and the gracious hospitality of our Livingston hosts and that of Ron Brisbois, Executive Director,  and John Murphy, President of GCEDC, here are the questions I posed last night:

Site Checklist:

  1. Is Economic Development prominently displayed in the navigation?
  2. Do you have text on the home page about Economic Development in your community?
    1. Specifically a paragraph with search terms that Economic Development professionals, business owners, job seekers, and relocating workers would use to find information.
  3. Are there links in that text that take visitors to the appropriate pages on your site?
  4. Does your Economic Development area include community profile information such as:
    • Transportation
    • Utilities
    • Emergency and Medical Services
    • Education/Employee Training
    • Major Employers
    • Taxes
    • Area Labor Force Information
    • Available buildings, sites, businesses
    • Housing Information
    • Community Contacts
    • Business & Industry Contact Information
  5. Is ALL of the information current?
  6. Have two people proofread your information for errors and accuracy?
  7. Do your Economic Development pages have the appropriate Title and META Description words?
  8. Do you have contact information on every page (in the footer) that interested parties will have in front of them after they print ANY of your pages?
  9. Do you have a Google (or other mapping service) Map/Directions page?
  10. Have you tried searching Google using the terms you believe prospects would use to find a community such as yours, when searching to locate a new/existing business, or  for personally relocating? If so, how did you do?

I also spoke briefly about using AdWords for Economic Development and gave them this very short list of AdWords Advantages:

  • Reach people who self-qualify themselves
  • Deliver them to the exact landing page that has content relevant to their search
  • Fully control your ad budget – Chose daily budget; change or stop it in seconds
  • See your ads on Google within minutes of creating them
  • Very flexible, pause, start, change, create ads in seconds or minutes

Quick tips that will get you results.

Tips for Empowering your Thank You page

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Every point of contact with a customer or prospect is an opportunity to provide better customer service, and to plant the seeds for a sale.  Your Thank You pages should confer your thanks, but it also can offer customers and visitors to your site something they may not have noticed, and that may be of interest to them.

Most of us don’t fully utilize the Thank You pages that get displayed after purchases, or when an inquiry is made via a form.  Too often, those pages, simply say “Thank You” or “Thank You for your order” or something like, “Your request is being processed. We’ll get back to you soon.”

Those types of pages are better than nothing, but they are missed opportunities. So, here are some tips for empowering your Thank You pages.

If you offer online shopping:

  1. Make the words Thank You bigger than the other text. While you are at it, tell them you appreciate their business
  2. Be sure to prominently display your Toll-Free phone number. If you don’t have a Toll-Free number, you are not serious about wanting customers.
  3. Have a link to the Customer Account login page.
  4. Display the special of the day, week, or month.
  5. Display at least two items, saying, “People who bought this also bought these items:”
  6. Have a link to your “Specials” or other RSS feeds
  7. Have links to your Shipping & Returns pages.
  8. Make sure your Thank You page has <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>  in the header,  so you don’t mess up your analytics. The only time anyone should see your Thank You page is after they place an order or fill out another form.
  9. Use  Adwords conversion tracking on your Thank You page. If you are not using Google AdWords, you should be.

If you don’t offer online shopping, you likely have a Contact, Request Info, or Sign Up form. Here are some tips for you.

  1. Make the words Thank You bigger than the other text. While you are at it, tell them you appreciate the time they gave you.
  2. Be sure to prominently display your Toll-Free phone number. If you don’t have a Toll-Free number, you are not serious about wanting customers.
  3. Prominently display an email address they can use if they want to contact you later instead of having to use your form again.
  4. Display and have a link to a daily, weekly, or monthly feature or  News (RSS) Feed.
  5. Make sure your Thank You page has <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>  in the header, so  you don’t mess up your analytics. The only time anyone should see your Thank You page is after they  fill out a form.
  6. If you are using Google AdWords, use conversion tracking on your Thank You page.

Use as few or as many of these tips that are appropriate for your site. As with any page, I am not suggesting a bunch of clutter. Use some thought as to positioning, layout and use of white space.

Turn that Thank You page into a customer service and sales opportunity!

Please add your own tips or thoughts by leaving a comment.

Keywords, Ad Copy, Landing Pages – Triumvirate

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Talking about Pay-Per-Click, Google AdWords mostly, search results and landing pages is pretty much a daily thing around our office. Accordingly, it makes sense to talk about it here.

Recently I had the opportunity, thanks to Andy Lewis, to be a part of a Webinar for “The National e-Commerce Extension Initiative” named “Maximizing Your Pay-Per-Click Campaign.”  We concentrated on Google AdWords. Why? It is my humble opinion that for most, a limited advertising budget is a reality. Google is the 500-pound Gorilla, and if you are going to feed web advertising money to anyone, it should be Google with over 72% of U.S. searches reported for February, 2009 according to Hitwise.

Last week I met with several representatives of one our largest clients, and discussed mostly AdWords and Analytics for the better part of the afternoon. In both cases we talked about Keywords, Ad Copy, Landing Pages at length. Why? Having high placements in Google AdWords or Google organic search results is directly related to those three powerful terms. They rule this world as surely as many of the Triumvirates of history.

The importance of Keywords, Ad Copy, Landing Pages, is a simple concept, while not difficult, that is complex in implementation when done correctly. The good news is, you don’t have to spend in inordinate amount of time working on your AdWords campaigns to get some immediate results. Very simply, just make sure your keywords are in your ad copy and on your landing pages (prominently). If you do that, you will see your Click-Through-Rate, aka CTR, improve as well as your placement.

If you, or your search professional, spend the time on your landing pages to write keyword-relevant “Titles,” meta “Descriptions,” Headings, and content including the keywords that potential visitors would using when searching for your product, service, or information, and you write quality ads, as well as conducting ad-variant testing, you will be rewarded with increased, targeted, self-qualified traffic. Serious keyword research, a knowledge of how Google likes your pages coded, and knowing how to write and place that code is part of what will take your AdWords campaign to another level. Of course a thorough knowledge of AdWords and your analytics program is necessary as well if you want optimum results. To that end, unless you have a lot of spare time, working with a search professional who has experience and successes on their resume is essential.

One of the cool benefits, is that, the time you, or your search professional, spend on your “landing pages” will eventually manifest itself as higher rankings in Google’s search result pages, aka SERPs. Google sells relevance. Make sure your site search strategy, both PPC and organic, includes relevant keywords, ad copy, and landing pages.

Keywords, Ad Copy, Landing Pages – The Triumvirate!

Google Adwords making Quality Score improvements

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According to a post yesterday in Inside Adwords, Google’s official blog about Adwords, “changes will take effect in all advertisers’ accounts over the next few days.”

They list three main improvements to Quality Score:

  • Quality Score is now more accurate — because it is calculated at the time of each search query
  • Keywords are no longer marked ‘inactive for search’ — all keywords are active because they are evaluated for every relevant query
  • ‘First page bid estimates’ replace ‘minimum bids’ in your account — providing a more actionable and useful metric to advertisers

You may read a detailed explanation by reading their “Google Adwords making Quality Score improvements to go live in coming days” post.

My first thoughts are:

I’ll remain from Missouri on their first listed change. We’ll see.

The ‘inactive for search’ change will help most people, but especially advertisers with smaller budgets that have unique products and search terms. While the search volume may be low on some terms, the return is not necessarily so.

Replacing ‘minimum bids’ with ‘First page bid estimates’ more clearly reflects the metric, and is an improvement. Though, as most often the case, Google is encouraging higher bids with this. That is not necessarily bad, just shouldn’t be constued as an altruistic change.

Bottom-line is that almost everyone can benefit from a Google Adwords campaign, and this makes Adwords a little better.

Google – Get Local, Get Traffic Quickly

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If you are using Google Maps Local Business Center, you can stop reading. If you are not using Google Maps Local, and your potential customer’s search terms include the name of the city, town, villiage, state, or geographical description of where your business is located, keep reading.

Often, searchers narrow their search results by adding one or more location-specific terms to their search. For example, the search term, “auto dealer lancaster wi” yields the following.

SERP for auto dealer lancaster wi

Who benefits? You get more visibility. The user gets more relevant results with less work. Win, win! Obviously, if you are in a rural area, there normally will be less competition. Consequently, rural business will generally have even better visibility. Even if you don’t get the click that time, it is still branding, branding, branding.

The position of where Google displays the map and listings varies from query to query. Sometimes, you’ll find it directly below one or more “Sponsored Links.” Other times there may be two or three organic listings above it. Or, there may be a video link above or below the Local business results.

So, how do you get listed? It is easy. You may already be listed. Google pulls your address and other information from public data. If you search for your business, and click on the “Directions and More” link. (see example above), you find more info and you will notice an “Edit” link. In the bubble on the map, you will see “Are you the owner?” and a “Claim your business” link.  You’ll need a Google Account, which many of you have. If you don’t have one, you can sign up and follow the instructions here. Note: The street address you enter will be shown in the Google Maps search results.

So, why should you use Google Maps Local?

  1. It gets results.
  2. It is free.
  3. It is easy to use.
  4. Oh, yes. It just plain gets results.

The bottom line is, you get a highly-visible link that most users will notice and click on before they click on Adword advertisements or organic listings.

Bonus Thought: You can safely bet that Google will continue to very aggressively push Google Maps and related advertising in the mobile hand-device market.

Don’t wait. Get Local, and Get Traffic Quickly!