If you haven’t heard already, there’s a new buzzword in town. Integrated Digital Strategy or IDS. At the centre of this theory, is the idea that your business’ digital and online marketing elements need to be fully integrated into your complete marketing approach.

“Googling it” has become a common form of follow up action after hearing a radio ad or viewing an ad on TV. This means that there is no clear cut segmentation between online consumers and offline consumers.

The benefits of creating an integrated digital strategy are numerous. In short, however, one of the best outcomes of implementing an IDS is that just about everything can be tracked.

For example, different website URLs can be referenced in offline advertisements which can then be tracked using code like Google Analytics. This means that you can track the actual advertising sources that your users are coming from.

But what does it mean for your digital marketing strategies? We’ve included a quick check list below to help you check the health of your digital strategy.

1. Do you have Google Analytics installed on your website?   YES / NO
2. Do you have code installed in all your links on your website to track which link has been clicked?   YES / NO
3. Are you ranking in the search engines for slogans and tag lines that are used in your offline advertisements?   YES / NO
4. Are you using promotional codes or unique URLs in your offline advertising so that you can track where your website visitors are coming from?   YES / NO
5. Are your digital offers available offline as well, in-store or over the phone?   YES / NO

If you answered no to any of the above questions, your digital strategy may not be fully integrated. Contact Reload today to discuss how we can help your business get the most out of your marketing strategies.

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There’s no doubt that Google has changed the way the world’s online information is gathered and stored. Google state that their mission is to make the web’s aggregated information “universally accessible and useful.”

It would appear that this is quite a simple mission statement for a company that already dominates over 85% of the planet’s search market share and has 620 million daily visitors to Google.com.

But Google are taking the ‘usefulness’ and functionality of online information so much further.

Google owns mobile phone software that works like a computer, communication platforms that allow you to contact everyone you do (or don’t yet) know and apps that can answer every question or situation you may face.

Here’s a sugarcoated overview of Google’s most impressive acquisitions and projects:

Google Chrome – OS

Google Chrome is an open source Operating System that has been designed to work exclusively with web applications. Google Chrome integrates application and standard web pages into a single tab and “is aimed at users that spend most of their computer time on the internet.” Google’s Chrome OS has an expected release for the second half of 2010 and is free to the public.

Google Chrome – Web Browser

Google Chrome has been designed to work with Web Applications and aims to improve ‘security, speed and stability’ when surfing the net, through its Application performance and JavaScript processing speed. Google Chrome currently holds 5.61% of the web browser market share, a big feat since its release in September 2009.

Google Wave – Personal Communication Software

Google Wave will be the new Facebook. Big call, I know but this web-based service creates a unified personal communication platform via voice, text, photos, videos, maps, and other digital tools. The aim is for multiple users to set up a collaborative environment known as a “wave” and then edit the content and add replies, just like a wiki.

Android – Mobile Software

Bought by Google in 2005 and announced in November 2007, Android is a open-source mobile phone operating system that will have enough apps to run your life, nearly. There are over 20,000 android phone applications available and over 60,000 new android phones are shipped daily.

Google Goggles – Android App

Google Goggles is an android application that allows phone users to search Google via pictures they take on their mobile phones. Google use various image recognition back ends such as object recognition then returns relevant search results. See the following video:

YouTube – Video Sharing

Google bought YouTube in October 2006 for $1.65 billion; not a bad deal for a garage project! If you didn’t already know how massive YouTube is, this video sharing platform dominates nearly 40% of the online video market share in the USA. With 20 hours of video uploaded every minute, YouTube will have no problems broadcasting the Indian Premier League this month.

So how did Lord Google gain its Googlopoly? They simplified accessing the web, built trust with users’ and managed to release technologies at the right pace for the market and society. Not to mention that most Google products are free; a surefire way to increase popularity.

With 45% of Google’s products still in Beta, I’m pretty sure that Google’s world domination is just getting started. Just Google it.

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…by Excluding Internal Traffic from your Google Analytics Reports!

Forgive the hyped up title, the following is simply a quick description of how to block your own IP address from being counted towards your Google Analytics traffic.

Do this and watch your conversion rates rise!

By the end of these ten steps you will know everything you need to know in order to exclude internal traffic from your reports.

The steps are as follows:

1. Login to Google Analytics
2. Click the name of the account you wish to create a filter for
3. Click the link to the “Filter Manager” (bottom right of your account dashboard)
4. Click “Add Filter” (top right corner of the grey box)
5. Give the filter a name
6. Select the “Predefined Filter” option
7. From the drop-down menus you will want to select “Exclude” “traffic from the IP addresses” “that are equal to”
8. Visit IP Chicken and make a note of the numbers that appear beneath “Current IP Address” – your IP address will appear in the following format: 74.125.74.129
9. You will now need to enter your IP address into the fields provided. If you see four boxes separated by dots simply enter the numbers in the corresponding box. If, however, there’s just the one box then you will need to enter your IP address using regular expressions. Don’t freak out – all this means is you have to put a backslash in front of all the decimal points, eg: 74\.125\.74\.129
10. The final step is to select the website “profiles” you wish to apply this filter to. Simply select your profile(s) and click “Add >>”. Once you’ve done this just hit “Save Changes” and you’re done!

How will this improve your conversion rate as promised in the title of this post? It’s simple – since you probably visit your own site regularly and never buy anything (you tyrekicker) you are unconsciously bloating your visitor numbers. Since conversion rate are essentially the number of visits required to make a sale, taking your own visits out of the equation will instantly improve your conversion rate!

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Ok everybody. Time to dust off that old marketing textbook you’re using to prop up your computer – we’re going back to basics!

If you turn to one of the first chapters you will find a tried and true path to AdWords marketing success. The 4 P’s of Marketing.

The 4 P’s of Marketing (Product, Price, Place and Promotion) should be one of this first ad creation strategies a search engine marketer turns to when building any new AdWords’ campaign. These four elements – which are the cornerstone of nearly all first year marketing textbooks – are of paramount importance in the search engine marketing sphere.

Here’s why.

Search engine marketing is a curious beast. Many bright eyed, bushy tailed newly graduated marketers who find themselves in a search engine marketing position often neglect these core marketing principles and attempt to develop over creative, over complicated and ultimately unattractive search advertising.

However, when creating ads for search engines, marketers need to put results ahead of creative ambitions. By keeping the 4 P’s in mind at all times, a marketer will discover very quickly that utilising some or all of these four elements in their ads – while adhering to strict advertising character limits – will automatically cut the fat off any over-ambitious advertising copy.

This is critical to AdWords success as, through employing this ad creation strategy, one can instantaneously increase any ad’s probability of quickly solving their audience’s perceived problem.

AdWords Solves Problems Quickly

Google is fast becoming the number one go-to source for problem solution amongst consumers. This is great news for advertisers as search engines create a veritable feeding ground of qualified, purchase ready individuals ready to have their problems solved by intuitive, relevant and magnetic advertising. Purchase ready consumers on Google are generally looking to find the quickest and most attractive solution to their perceived problem. So solve their problems quickly and creatively with your ads!

Integrating the 4 P’s

The trick with Search Marketing is to create ads that possess an even balance of creativity and detail about the advertised product/service. If you put yourself in the shoes of a purchase ready consumer on Google, you will begin to understand the importance of utilising the 4P’s in your ads.

For example…

Let’s say you are searching to buy a new acoustic guitar and the following two ads appear:

As you can see, although the first ad in this scenario uses a (somewhat) creative emotional appeal, the second ad would likely generate a much higher CTR as it gives users more than one reason to click.

Let’s break it down.

Assuming the search term was ‘acoustic guitar sydney’, the ad above touches on all four of the 4 P’s:

Product: Acoustic Guitar

Price: From $499

Place: Sydney

Promotion: Huge Acoustic Guitar Sale

The lesson here is to take some time out to evaluate some of your current ads to see whether they are working hard to solve your target audience’s problem. If they aren’t try rebuilding some of your ads with the product, price, place and/or promotion details integrated into your copy.

Or, if you don’t have the time or patience to do it yourself, talk to a specialist AdWords’ firm like Reload.

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To ensure your website works hard for your business, you need to make sure that it is both user-friendly and search-engine-friendly. Striking a balance between these two items is extremely important if you want a website that is both visible in the online market and successful in communicating with your customers.

It’s no good having a fantastically designed website that communicates your brand and engages with your customers when they reach your website if they can’t actually find it when they start searching in search engines. And similarly, it’s no use having a website that ranks at the top of Google if your users only get frustrated after the first 10 seconds they spend on the site, only to return to the search engine results and go to a competitor’s website that ranks below yours.

But there are a few ways that you can balance the requirements of both users and search engine spiders:

1. Content, content, content. Search engine friendly websites are all about the content. However, usability experts say that users won’t read your website extensively and excess content will only frustrate them as they won’t be able to find the important information they are looking for. There are a couple of ways to ensure your users can still find what they are looking for while also increasing the content on your website for the search engines. Firstly, make sure important content that is aimed at users is kept above the fold line. Users will read by scanning the page and they’ll often get sick of reading before they get to the bottom of the page. Search engine spiders, however, are not so fussy. They’ll read the text even if it’s at the bottom of the page. Therefore, place SEO content at the bottom of the page and even segment horizontally with a line to deter users from reading that far and becoming bogged down.
2. Use logical headings. These need to strike a balance between your SEO keywords and the need to also guide users as to what will be included in the page content. Users read a web page by first scanning the headings before deciding whether it is worth the time reading the content. Search engines also like headings so it’s important to make sure your headings are logical and well thought out.
3. Keep content fresh. Make sure your content is always up-to-date. Users will become frustrated if they find out of date information, particularly if your site advertises upcoming events or other date-related items. Search engines also like to see fresh content that is constantly updated.
4. Check for errors regularly. Not only are broken links frustrating for users but they also annoy the spiders. It goes without saying, but you should also make sure there are no spelling errors on your website.

Obviously there are far more ways to improve the usability or search-engine-friendliness of your site, but these are just a few starting points to help strike a balance between a user-friendly site and a search-engine-friendly site.

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Search engines like Google use algorithms to define where a particular website sits in the search engine results pages (SERPs). These algorithms are constantly updated from a daily to hourly basis, depending on what can be improved; this helps ensure the most relevant websites are returned to the entered search query.
In order to help improve a website’s ranking, authority is required. Authority can be acquired through various factors, one of which is content. As crawling, finding and adding new content is the primary aim of all search engines; content clearly becomes a very important factor to every website owner.

Adding Content

To ensure maximum return on any content you add, there are a few simple steps to consider –

• Unique – Unique content is what search engines crave, once it’s added to your website, don’t duplicate it. Duplicated content can result in penalisation and potentially even banning your website from the search engines index.
• Relevant – Content that’s relevant to your site is essential, as it helps build what your site is about to both search engines and visitors.
• Plentiful – You can never have too much content, therefore when the opportunity arises, add more content. Furthermore, create pages with content revolving around a particular topic, helping boost your authority even more.
• Fresh – We love our fresh groceries and produce; well search engines love fresh content. Continually adding fresh, unique content will ensure constant updating of your site in the search engines indexes.
• Interesting – Keeping your content interesting will help improve your websites online presence, potentially opening the doors for natural link building, substantially increasing your authority.

Content is the foundation of any websites success, therefore combining all above factors can help start your website on the right track to building authority effectively.

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How do you tell whether your website would benefit more from being displayed in the organic or cost-per-click listings on the search engine results page?

Every company has different targets, keyword rankings and goals that it is striving to achieve with their website, so undertaking in one or the other can be sufficient for your site’s traffic, enquiries and sales.

But if you want the best of both worlds, put simply, your site can benefit from both as there are numerous advantages of appearing in both paid and unpaid listings.

Around 55-65% of users will click on the organic search engine listings, and around 35-45% will click on the paid search engine results (depending on whose research you believe).

The unpaid, organic listings can increase a site’s keyword rankings by undertaking Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). The majority of users will choose to follow the organic listings, as these results are seen to be less biased and can be perceived as being more relevant to the keywords that the user is looking for.

The catch for engaging in SEO is that most companies do not guarantee results and it can take months to start seeing traction on keywords, especially in competitive industries. Online competitors could have an authoritative advantage in the search engines if their sites have been around for longer and hold the keyword positions that your site is trying to target.

This is where dabbling in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) as well as SEO, is handy.

SEM creates the paid, “sponsored” links that appear usually on the right-hand side of the search engine results page and are virtually instantaneous. This allows your site to emerge on the first few pages in Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines, while SEO is doing its ground work to get noticed.

The benefits of creating an SEO and SEM synergy include:

Market Penetration

Engaging in both SEO and SEM allows search engine users to be ‘captured’ at all stages of the buying process. Users that are in the problem recognition or information search stages of the buying process are more likely view organic listings. On the other hand, users who are closer to making a purchase decision or are evaluating alternative products and services are more likely to click on SEM advertisements.

A Stronger Web Presence

SEM paid listings provides visibility for competitive keywords that a site may find hard to rank initially through SEO.

Greater Measurability

Having a site’s SEO keyword ranking statistics and the SEM traffic, keyword and conversion statistics allows for a greater level of accountability and the ability to cross-reference results. These results can also be measured and reviewed over time and can help drive traffic and sales for your site by focusing efforts on top-performing keywords.

Build Credibility

Research shows that users associate the ‘Top Ten’ organic page results with companies that are the industry leaders. Couple this with some catchy Google AdWords or other cost-per-click advertisements and a site will appear to have the online industry covered.

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When managing an AdWords account, foresight is imperative.

Understanding upcoming seasonal events and trends and how they relate to the product or service you are selling is a vital skill for any AdWords marketer.

Consider this; you own a lawn mowing business and are currently advertising online. At the moment you are only running generic ads, yet you are still getting a steady amount of enquiries through your website.

Although it is fantastic that you have optimised your campaigns to the point where they are generating a stable revenue stream for you, now is not the time to rest on your laurels.

Google AdWords campaigns require continual optimisation and maintenance in order to maximise any opportunities that may be missed with a ‘set and forget’ style of AdWords management.

For an example of how your mowing business might leverage itself off some major holidays and events during the year, you might consider running ads like:

You can also create new keyword lists, adjust your daily budgets, create new landing pages for your ads or utilise a variety of other common AdWords techniques in order to help you capture some of the increased traffic and online spending that occurs during these periods.

The trick however, is not just to simply capture the extra traffic, but to harness the ‘spirit’ of the event, holiday or season in your strategies.

Remember: Sell the sizzle, not the steak.

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As the economy recovers from global recession, businesses will continue to explore alternative ways to market their business. Also, as more people get easy access to fast internet connections there is plenty of scope for online business to expand rapidly.

However, getting visibility through the search engines is critical to success and one of the most cost effective marketing approaches available.

As search engines becomes more complex with the introduction of social networking feeds (Twitter) into their results, it’s high time for businesses to optimise their websites. Hence the New Year’s resolution for a business should be to get to the top of Google.

The power of search engines can only be experienced once your site is optimised and ranking well in the search engines. As the competition becomes fiercer amongst search engines in the coming year, it is very important to make sure your business is visible on all the major search engines.

This year is all about entering new markets and reaching the unattainable heights that is only possible through digital marketing. The success rate of SEO Marketing is higher compared to almost any other form of online marketing. Each and every single day, several billion users log into various search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo to locate business services and products. SEO can help your website to gain higher Search Engine Rankings and thus help in improving online visibility of your website.

SEO marketing is surely one of the ground-breaking marketing techniques which will help your website to gain more exposure on various search engines. It will also help you to reach out to a large number of potential customers resulting in increased revenue and ROI.

This is a New Year’s resolution you need to keep!

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Your website has the potential to be the most profitable employee in your business, but you need to make it work hard!

This statement may have some scratching their heads, but the similarities between a business’ website and their employees makes it more than achievable.

Let’s firstly look at initial costs. Most websites cost between $5,000-$30,000 to build, which, depending on your industry, is also around the amount it can cost to recruit and train new staff.

But once you’ve recruited a new staff member, the job’s not done. In order for that employee to become a valued team player you need to invest in training, resources and time, as well as pay them a yearly salary.

This goes for your website as well. Once it’s built, you need to invest in continually improving its effectiveness. This often includes both search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) on an ongoing basis as the website’s salary, and ongoing usability improvements as their training.

Like an employee, websites also work best when there’s an ongoing buy-in from managers, spending time actually trying to improve the work that they’re doing, rather than being left alone to twiddle their thumbs and cost the business money.

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