What If You Could Rank on Google Without Doing Ads?

What are online advertising platforms?

Online advertising has exploded. If you read any article about marketing these days, there’s just an assumption that you’re doing online ads. Google is raking in an estimated $100M/day from this business alone. Amazon’s right up there, helping Jeff Bezos finance his next trip to the great beyond. 

We advertise on Facebook and Linkedin, on Twitter and Instagram

Every business with an online platform is offering advertising opportunities. But online ads, (pay-per-click or PPC) are a bit of an art form. You can’t create an ad and expect it to just perform for you. You’ve got to test, monitor, make adjustments and swap it out to keep it fresh. Like a twelve-step program, it works if you work it. My experience is that many people launch their ad campaigns and assume that they’re going to be driving lots of new traffic to their websites and ultimately, new clients. Unfortunately, if you’re not committing to managing your PPC campaign, you’re likely wasting your marketing dollars.

It's hard to rank organically on Google 

It’s increasingly difficult to rank organically, which means it’s hard to show up on page one of a Google search without paying for ads. Take a look at a search results page and you’ll see that the results all say “Ad” next to them. Someone’s paying (a lot) to rank on the first or even second page of Google or other search engines. 

But what if you could rank high on Google without having to do PPC ads? 

I’ve been using some new software that’s based on creating content that matches the high-ranking search terms/keywords that people are keying into a Google search. For someone like me, for whom writing is easy, I can write a blog exactly matching those keyword phrases in my titles. These show up in my website’s information bar and Google recognizes these titles as part of its content indexing process. I use other highly ranked keyword phrases in my headlines and subheads and assign “H” tags to them, which Google also looks for.

This software, DemandJump, is giving me a blueprint—or think of these as breadcrumbs--for how to show up in search. The information is cumulative, of course, but I’ve been using this for a month or so, and I’m starting to see the results. I’m getting calls from people who saw me in a Google search. Happy. 

DemandJump’s content is based on a pillar strategy

DemandJump is based on creating a content hierarchy. At the top of every content pillar is a 3,000-word pillar page—this is an exhaustive overview of your business. Your individual landing pages roll up to your main pillar page. Blogs roll up to landing pages. It’s a hierarchy--layered, interconnected webs of content. Everything is connected, with links among pages and topics to keep the user engaged.

I love this application! Interested in DemandJump? Give Top of Mind Marketing a call and let’s talk about how this might work for your business. 

 

Facebook Ads Boost CPA’s Lead Generation

One of my clients had been doing a good job of managing his own marketing program, but as his business grew, he found that he didn’t have time to develop and execute a strategic plan. The result? He ended up spending money on last-minute Hail-Mary efforts that weren’t reaching his audience. Those great one-time special deals that ad salespeople talk you into aren’t special at all; they’re a waste of money. We developed a strategy that includes Facebook ads.

Marketing had become fragmented and perfunctory

For this client, a CPA, a monthly newsletter was becoming a quarterly, his weekly blog was now a monthly and his social media posts were sporadic and uninspired, often missing images. He understood the power of marketing and enjoyed the creativity; he simply didn’t have time to do this well.

We reviewed his Google Analytics reports to evaluate his website traffic

We wanted to know the demographics of his visitors and from what domains they were coming, how long they stayed on his site and their drilldown patterns.

When I asked him about his target audience, his answer was too general, so our marketing plan included an exercise in creating personas. We wanted to develop detailed profiles of those clients with whom he really wanted to be working—not necessarily those with whom he was now working. We wanted to identify their likes and dislikes, ages, professions, lifestyle preferences, etc.

We agreed that Facebook advertising should be part of our marketing program

We included Facebook pay-per-click (PPC) in our marketing plan. We would start with keyword research to identify those words we should be using in all of our online communications. We also wanted to identify negative keywords—those words we should be avoiding.

Facebook advertising: ability to drill down to specific demographic information

Facebook may be unique for the detailed personal information it collects. Facebook’s fields make up a fairly comprehensive database. Every time we fill in a field with information about our lives and our preferences, we’re contributing to a rich data pool.

• We needed to create a goal—was it a phone call, email, a signup for his newsletter or a Like? The call to action needed to be clear and accessible.
• We decided to create landing page on our website. It will be branded and synchronize with the ad messaging.
• As with all online media, the headline is critical–you have just seconds and 30 characters to catch someone’s attention. Be a little edgy. Be bold. Be funny. Take a chance.
• Use high-res images that are relevant and attention-getting. Spend time finding really good images.
• Select a bidding option. Clicks, impressions, Likes.

The great thing about PPC advertising? You control costs

You pay only when someone clicks on your ad, and your daily budget identifies how much you will spend on a campaign. Once you hit your daily limit, your ads stop showing. Cost effectiveness, along with the ability to personalize your ads by detailed demographic fields, makes Facebook advertising a very effective way to promote your business.

Need help with your PPC campaign? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and internet marketing specialists.

Creating Personas to Define Your Business Audience

A new client’s website was nine years old and she wanted help showing up in search engines. I explained that search engines discriminate against those sites that haven’t been adapted for mobile devices. She was sabotaging herself with her current site. “Zoe” was talking about a little enhancement; I was talking about starting over. A nine-year old site is really not redeemable.

Who was her audience? “Everyone” is the wrong answer

Zoe had a fairly extensive collection of blogs on her site, and as I read through them I wasn’t getting a clear sense of who she was, which is a problem. But more importantly, I didn’t have any idea who her audience was. When I asked her about this, I knew what her answer was going to be: “Everyone is my audience; some of my readers are 16, I have grandmothers reading my blogs as well as industry professionals.” Wrong answer. This is marketing 101—everyone is not your audience. As a small business owner, you really can’t be successful without identifying the niche that really is your audience.

Time to create personas

I explained to her how we were going to create personas. I wanted her to think about whom she visualized when she closed her eyes and pictured a typical client. I wanted her to describe that person for me. I wanted her to be making an emotional connection with that person, to think about that client when she was writing a blog. The scope of our work together included keyword analysis, a new website, a newsletter and pay-per-click advertising (PPC). For PPC, especially, identifying a persona and keywords is critical to the success of a campaign, but it’s also important for her website’s landing pages.

Personas help define our audiences

By understanding demographics, we learn to communicate more effectively with our audiences. Facebook’s powerful advertising appeal lies is its ability to drill down to the details of people’s lives. Every Facebook field that we fill out provides data for someone to mine. For Zoe, as with most of us, we well may have more than one persona. And for each of these, we’re going to create a comprehensive persona based on the following information:

• Age and gender.
• Communication preferences. How do they get their information? Text, email? Do they hate telephone calls?
• Technical experience and background. Do they love instructional videos or prefer to read directions?
• Job title and major responsibilities.
• Education, ethnicity and family status.
• Pain points or frustrations. Important clues for how we can help them solve problems.
• Industry and working environment. A quiet office or the emergency room.
• Biggest challenges and how they deal with them.
• Shopping preferences. Favorite stores or online?
• Food and drink. Favorite area restaurants and bars.
• Persona names and photos. Giving your personas names and uploading photos provide an identity.
• Interview real clients to discover what they like about your product or service.

Creating personas is a valuable exercise that will help you market more effectively to your audience.

Do you need help with your online marketing program? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re internet marketing specialists.

I encourage my clients to develop case studies and post them to their websites, social media and anywhere else where they have a forum. Real-life stories provide compelling insights into how we successfully help our clients solve problems. This is one of my own case studies.

“Oliver” found me on Yelp—the app we love to hate–but it can also be a legitimate source of new business. Oliver fled a boring corporate career and began designing and selling furniture made from reclaimed teak wood. Everything is sustainable—he’s created processes for sourcing old structures in Indonesia, disassembling them beam by beam to create the materials that will become his beautiful furniture. He has a Berkeley showroom and sells furniture online.

Here’s the problem . . .

Oliver had built a fairly steady stream of online sales from his e-commerce website. A year or so ago, he upgraded his WordPress site with enhanced visuals and navigation. Once he rolled out the new site, that online sales stream completely dried up. He gave this enough time to confirm that this wasn’t just seasonal or a little economic downturn.

Our goal: Restore online sales

Our goal was to restore online traffic and sales, so we began troubleshooting his site. We peeled back the layers and found that there were more than 20 WordPress plugins that hadn’t been updated, and these were creating conflicts. A vast array of plugins is one of the things that makes WordPress so powerful, but they’re not all compatible with each other, and they need to be upgraded. As we cleaned up the infrastructure, we kept finding anomalies and bugs, and a simple project grew more complex.

Keyword research, image labels and alt tags

Along the way, we did keyword research to identify those words and phrases that our audience might be keying into search fields to find us—this helped us know what words and phrases to be using in our content. We labeled every single image, created alt tags and descriptions for literally hundreds of product pictures. We finally rolled out the upgrades, and we’re all delighted that our client is starting to get online orders again.

We added a monthly newsletter to the marketing mix

We began doing a monthly newsletter in MailChimp. We keep this simple, highlighting three products and including a promo code so we can track responses. We’re getting an astonishing 45-55% open rate, a high click-through rate and conversions with our mailings. The newsletter is easy to turn around and looks great; the ROI on this makes it easy to include this in our marketing plan.

Up next: Pay-per click advertising

Our website blues aren’t completely over. We still find issues that befuddle us, but among us, we solve the problems as they arise. With the website stabilization, we’re planning to add Pay-per-Click (PPC)advertising to our marketing mix. We’ve identified a budget, and we’ll carefully monitor our campaign, adjusting as we go, to make this another component of our marketing program.

Do you need help with your PPC or other online marketing program? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re internet marketing specialists.