Tuesday, March 25, 2008
So says an independent report commissioned by the PPC arm of Microsoft, AdCenter. The report, released in November last year, also highlights the fact that British businesses are wasting over £3 billion on websites hidden from customers. It describes how although some 2.79 million small businesses have an online presence, a staggering 62% are not investing in search marketing campaigns to help potential customers find them online; the equivalent of owning a shop hidden down a side street and not advertising its whereabouts.
The research, which questioned 400 UK SMEs, reveals 44% of SMEs not doing search marketing think it is too time consuming; 56% think it is too expensive; and 33% too complicated. However, 76% of SMBs promoting their website on search engines see an immediate increase in sales. We at SearchPath see this time and time again: how PPC campagns, when managed by us, provide quality, targated leads consistently for our customers.
Peter Scargill, IT Chairman for the Federation of Small Businesses said: “A well-known website can allow a small business to compete on an equal footing with larger competitors. But that only works if the site can be found by potential customers. Having an online presence is something that more and more small businesses are using to drive growth in the future but they will be wasting their money if they don’t make people aware of it.”
SearchPath specialise in PPC campaign management, and we aim to maximise the revenue from each marketing pound. Call 01285 643496 for more information.
General Motors has announced, in what could signal a no-look-back shift to digital marketing, that half of its $3 billion marketing budget will move to digital marketing in the next three years. GM will use several online methods including gaming, search, mobile and a broad array of interactive applications. As the US's third largest advertiser, GM’s switch may signal a tipping point in the marketing strategies of the automotive, and other industries.
Other car makers are also upping their online spend; Hyundai will double its online spending in 2008 over 2007.
Like many firms, GM and Hyundai are increasingly finding out that the buying process starts, and often ends, online. They are realising that unlike traditional forms of marketing (print, radio, TV), online marketing allows campaigns to be much more targeted to their current and prospective customers. This very often results in a lower cost per acquisition rate than traditional marketing, meaning your budgets stretch further.
At SearchPath we specialise in all forms of online marketing, be it PPC, SEO, email marketing or web analytics. Contact us to see what we can do for you.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Google is about to add 'page loading time' as a factor in calculating PPC Quality Scores.
Load time is the amount of time it takes for a user to see the landing page after clicking an ad.
Quality Score is important as a lower Quality Score means you could pay higher click charges and vice cersa.
See
Inside Adwords for more information.
Google is making this change to improve the 'user experience' - people don't want to wait for slow website pages to load, so Google will penalise site owners for this with higher click charges.
Google is preparing to crack down on advertisers who use AdWords ads to re-direct visitors to another website.
From April 1st, the domain displayed in the AdWords ad must be the same domain as the one the customer lands on after they click the ad. You will no longer be allowed to use redirection to move people to a different website. People abusing this rule will have their ads suspended.
For instance, if your display URL is website.com, you can't then send visitors to website.co.uk.
Sub domains are still ok, so long as the visitors end up at the same root domain. eg keyword.website.com. Visitors can be sent to website.com, but again not website.co.uk or keyword.website.co.uk.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
While on the phone to Microsoft resolving some upload issues the operator let slip that adCenter will have its own editor soon, similar to that of the
Google AdWords Editor.
As the adCenter interface can be unreasonably slow at times it will be more efficient if we are able to download entire accounts, make changes then hit the upload button. This will result in better management of adCenter accounts and probably more advertisers on the adCenter search engine.
Definitely a step in the right direction as far as we’re concerned, if only Yahoo would follow suit!
We'll keep you informed.
