We have  said it once and today we will say it again – following up with web generated leads as soon as possible is a good idea.  A  2008 study by MIT and InsideSales.com, should helpto  increase your businesses sales.

• According to the MIT study, “the odds of contacting a lead if called within 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drops 100 times.”  Statistics for qualifying leads are equally as surprising – “the odds of qualifying a lead in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drops 21 times.” Since the qualification stage is where we find out the purchasing potential of the web generated lead we should pay close attention and strive to follow up with all leads within 5 minutes.

• What’s interesting about this study is that it only takes into account leads that were called upon at least one time.  Many studies exist that show between 30-80% of web generated leads are never followed up on.  If your business has any leads that fit this category, maybe it is time to add additional sales staff or other tools that can help your sales team quickly follow up on web generated leads.

• The best times of the day to make contact is between 4 to 6 pm. 7-8 AM and 11-12 were some of the worst times to call during the day. The study seems to suggest that calling leads around breakfast and lunch time is not the prime time for contacting or qualifying leads.  The study still leads the reader to believe that regardless of the time called – calling within 5 minutes is the most ideal follow up time.

• The study also found that Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to call in order to contact web-generated leads. Tuesday is the worst day to make contact with a lead, with Thursday being a 49.7% better day to call.  Now, we wouldn’t suggest that everyone takes off Tuesdays for the rest of the year, but maybe Tuesdays should be earmarked for learning sessions and quarterly off site meetings for your sales teams.

If you don’t already have a way of making sure your web generated leads are being followed-up with quickly – you should set a process in place right away.

As Paid Search becomes more and more competitive, advertisers are forced to become smarter about their PPC strategies to attain their goals.  One of the most difficult transitions can be for Brick and Mortar stores to compete online against bigger rivals who have vast budgets and resources, optimized websites and other bells and whistles.  This can be overwhelming for business owners who want to compete at a local level online. How do you compete?

You are local!

Local PPC Strategies can be an effective strategy that focuses your efforts on users who are looking online for brick and mortar stores  to physically see the products they are going to purchase, talk to a salesperson to have questions answered and be sure the product is the right fit.  To implement a localized PPC campaign, there are three easy steps to follow to get your account moving in the right direction.

• Target the right terms– find search queries to target that include the City, State, Zip or even part of town your business is located.  An example is if you own a shop that sells surf boards located in North Austin.  Use keyword tools like Google’s to find what amount of traffic is localized.  Add additional qualifiers like Austin, 78756, North Austin and others to your terms to target those who are searching for your product in your area of business.  The use of the qualifier focuses your budget on the right type of traffic and weed out those who are looking to purchase online.

• Ad Copy (use of Local Business Extension)-once your keyword list is ready to go, the next piece of the buy is to use ad copy to highlight that your are a local business.  Google’s LOCAL BUSINESS EXTENSION allows you to create a 5th line of text that includes you business address with a clickable link to Google Maps to see where you are located.  The use of local business extension makes your ad pop out to users who are searching for a local business by adding this 5th line of text.  Google also allows you to track how many clicks the link to Google Maps gets to see how effective this strategy can be.

• Landing Page- The final piece of the puzzle is to add landing pages that highlight your products, location and send an encouraging message to drive traffic into your stores.  Some ways to track the effectiveness of the landing page is to have a coupon that users can bring into your stores for a 10% discount.  The biggest thing many advertisers overlook is keeping the user experience level from start to finish.  You have targeted the right traffic with your keyword list, sent the right message with your ad copy…be sure to keep that message constant with your landing page.

As you see your efforts improve through the use of a localized strategy, you can grow this strategy by adding the use of mobile targeted paid ads.  Mobile ads are even more targeted to local traffic as most searches on smart phones are visitors who are en route to find your products or services.  We will have more on Local Mobile PPC to follow…

The next step I often take in working to create a successful SEO campaign is often a fun one for me.  The purpose of this step is to take inventory of what you have to begin with.  You’re likely to fall in or near one of the two following groupings:  You are fortunate enough to have a site ranking for some decent phrases, already have some traffic coming in from those rankings, and you might even have some conversions from SEO.  Or, you have a site but not much else…yet!  Either way, this step gets you to look at where you’re starting from and even if you’re starting with nearly nothing, the fun comes from knowing you will be able to improve.

What baselines are important to record early on?

Your first instinct may lead you to start by noting where your site ranks for certain keywords.  While this is an important metric that you can (and should) easily compare with over time, I would encourage you to spend your time finding where your starting point is from a web analytics perspective and save setting keyword ranking baselines until you are doing keyword research.

Whether you’re using a free web analytics platform (such as Google Analytics) or you’re using a paid option, you will have a lot of information available to you.  Starting out, dig up at least enough information to answer the following questions:

• how much traffic do you receive from organic, non-paid traffic

• what percentage of your organic traffic is from Google, Yahoo or Bing

• what keywords drive your natural search traffic
• how much referral traffic do you receive now

• what sites refer traffic to you

• what are your typical bounce rates
• how long do visitors typically spend on your main pages
• how many conversions come from natural search traffic

Feel free to give us a call if you have trouble gathering any of this information!

Note:  this information can typically be referenced in your analytics account at any time but I see a lot of benefit from pulling this information early on.  There are a lot of ways to manipulate this data to give you the information that you need.  For instance, you may want to compare data from December 2009 to December 2008.

Dig into your data early on and establish your baselines to get a better idea of where you’re starting and what you need to focus on to improve.

The next step in this SEO gameplan discusses what considerations you should move through when choosing what keywords to pursue with Search Engine Optimization.

To Make Connections

Facebook just reached 300 million active users and nearly half of these users check their pages daily. This means that your business’s page has an extremely high chance of being seen and interacted with daily. If your company takes the time to network, constantly reaches out to interested parties, and becomes part of the discussion, Facebook will become a successful marketing venue. Facebook is a place to make connections with your current users and potential customers, inevitably growing your business.

To Increase Business

Due to recent changes in marketing tracking and Facebook’s partnership with Nielsen, companies can now track how successful their Facebook efforts have been on a ROI level. It now goes beyond how many people have “fanned” your company, to showing exactly how these fans have impacted growth. Moreover, simply creating a new online presence in the fastest growing social media network shows that you understand what people want, and know what is currently engaging your customers’ attention.

To Manage Your Reputation

Immersing your company in the depths of Facebook discussions puts your organization on the same level as its customers. If you give them a direct connection with your brand, you are more likely to answer questions and correct falsities that arise before they hit the blogs. Facebook fan pages are a new platform to manage crisis and reach your company’s publics quickly and efficiently.

Fan Pages are Public

Facebook “pages” are more suited to businesses than group pages or people profiles and could help your company build another online presence. The fan pages were produced to give companies the optimal communication outlet and allow their customers to “fan” them- showing everyone a connection to the brand and opening a discussion. Pages are indexed by Google and can be searched and viewed by non-Facebook members, giving non-members the option to view your page. Mass messages can be sent to all fans, and any update to your profile is shown on your fans’ News Feed. The presence of your fan page can spread virally, reaching people and getting them involved.

To Get People Excited

Facebook is a relatively blank canvas for your company to experiment and explore. Page options like adding pictures, links, applications, videos, discussion boards, reviews, and company information, will engage your fans. The more you add and interact with the page, the more the fan is reminded of your brand and the hip things you are doing for it. Facebook can aid your company in generating buzz- In a lot of ways it does your PR grunt work for you. While no social media network encourages straight self-promotion, there is room to promote new products and sales offers.

– Leverage Marketing Team

Yahoo Paid Ads has recently rolled out new Advanced bidding options that are second to none in the Paid Search Market.  With the new  Bidding options, you are now able to target your bids based on:

• Demographics (Age, Sex)
• City and State Targeting
• Time of Day Targeting

The roll-out of the new bidding options will allow you to set your campaigns to target bids more aggressively for all of the variables mentioned.  This rivals bidding options on Google and Bing because of the ability to take the Demographic, Geo and/or Time of Day information and bid more aggressively by what works and back off bids on what doesn’t.

An example of this would be if your are client X and you sell online books.  Based on the demographic and regional data collected, you find that women in their 30-40s  and in major Metropolitan areas has the highest conversion rates.  You can set your campaign settings to increase bids for those visitors by x% in effort to increase exposure to your target market.  On the flip side, if you find that there is a high cost involved with people under the age of 18 you can lower your bids on this demographic.

Overall, while there are many needed improvements on Yahoo’s Search Marketing platform, the ability to control bidding at this level adds a whole new level of strategy.  When it comes to bid optimization efforts, Yahoo now has the advantage!