Out of the Fog Marketing

Validating what we have been seeing for awhile with our clients, senior marketing executives view search engine optimization, pay-per-click (PPC) and e-mail tactics as the three most effective tools, according to a new study by Forbes Media.

Among the pool of senior marketing executives, the tools seen as most effective for generating conversions were SEO (48%), email and e-newsletter marketing (46%) and pay-per-click/search marketing (32%).

Respondents to Forbes’ survey rated ad networks and video ads as least effective.

The study, “Ad Effectiveness Survey,” received 112 responses from senior marketing executives.

Labels: BtoB marketing, direct email marketing, forbes, ppc, SEO

Great article by Ian Howie on Wordtracker's site. We find many companies to a decent job of keyword search, a mediocre job of ad copy and a dismal effort at landing pages. However it's one of the more important pieces of the conversion process.

If your landing page does not have anything to do with your keyword or ad copy or does not have a call to action, then it will be a wasted click. You are likely to see bounce rates off this page upwards of 85%.

Also Google assigns a quality rating to your keyword based on the quality of the landing page and its relevance to the particular keyword. The more targeted and relevant your ads and landing pages, the more favorably you are treated by Google.

Labels: google adwords, ian howie, keywords analysis, pay per click, ppc, wordtracker

Check out Carrie Hill's great advice this week on writing copy for search engines. There are some simple tips such as using tildas instead of pipes or dashes on a web page title to stand out from the organic search crowd. Carrie also offers some great advice on formatting pay-per-click (PPC) ads.

Labels: carrie hill, copywriting, lseo copy, pay per click, ppc, search day, search engine optimization