Internet Search Engine Marketing

Traditionally, the marketing manager and the accountant have never “got on”. This is because an accountant needs to see concrete evidence that money spent on marketing has resulted in a quantifiable increase in sales that can be measured.

If I spend $10,000 on putting a sign up on the side of a building, I want to see an increase in sales by “x” number of units to make sure I at least cover the cost of the advertisement.

Marketers will talk about qualitative benefits of marketing such as building brand awareness, however for most small and medium business owners, you need to see an immediate return on your investment.

This is why I love internet marketing. There are 2 main forms of internet search engine marketing, Pay Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Both of these methods provide you with detailed reports allowing you to calculate exactly how much you have spent to get customers to your site and how many of these you convert to sales. They also allow you to target your ads geographically by making those ads only appear to people based in specified geographical areas.

Pay Per Click

These are the ads you see under the “sponsored search” area of your search results. The great thing about PPC marketing is that as long as you have a website, you can start seeing results immediately. The catch is that you have to pay every time someone clicks on your ad. The cost depends on the popularity of the term you want to be found for and the higher you bid, the higher you appear in the results.

Remember you can “cap” your daily budget so you can give it a try for a month and see if the increased sales cover the cost of your PPC account.

Search Engine Marketing

SEO is the “Holy Grail” of internet marketing. It involves a number of different techniques such as backlinks and site content that establish your website as a credible resource for people searching for different keywords within the different search engines.

The formula used by search engines such as Google and Yahoo to rank different websites are highly guarded trade secrets which differentiate them from each other. By definition, this makes it impossible for anyone to “promise” they can get you a front page “natural” ranking for a specific website.

The beauty of it is, that once you achieve a decent ranking, it doesn’t cost you anything to drive people to your site. Achieving that ranking does cost and does take time. Don’t even try to do it yourself, just get an SEO expert who knows what they’re doing.

Robert Mirabito from Click2It Digital Marketing and and has achieved great results for me and some of my clients and has been good enough to offer his services to moderate the Internet Marketing section of our forum.

I personally believe that companies have been slow to pick up on the effectiveness of internet marketing because (without sounding ageist) managers from the “baby boomer” generation are probably not quite as internet savvy and don’t appreciate it’s potential. As more management positions are taken over by Gen x’ers and y’s, I believe it will become harder and harder to get your website found naturally.

So, if you’re not convinced, have a dabble with SEO and if you see results, start investing in SEO. It’s worth the investment!

November 19, 2007 | Filed Under Bookkeeping Tips 

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