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Are Your Biz Dev Efforts Running Aground?

by BusinessInternet AdvertisingOnline MarketingSEOSocial Media Marketing

I was having a conversation last week with my Dad, who is retired but still has one of the better small business minds that I’ve seen. I value his counsel, and (occasionally) his often blunt and sometimes harsh assessment of my abilities in the office (my Dad, you see, is a tough man to impress).

Anyway, as I was complaining about the state of the economy and the headwinds we’re surely facing as a small business, he reminded me that I have not paid enough time or attention to business development this year. And unfortunately, he’s right.

I get so busy running the company and working with clients that I often put our sales on the back burner. Of course, I’m always available to speak with a prospective client when they call in, but it’s generating those perspective clients that I too often forgo.

We have several inbound marketing strategies that we employ, with the most important one being a paid search (Google Ads) campaign. It drives highly targeted leads to our business, but it requires effort and time to work properly. I tend to spend most of my time ensuring that our client’s Google Ads campaigns are performing at their best, and sometimes I don’t devote enough time to our own campaign. As a result, it hasn’t been performing as well this year as it has in previous years, and I need to change that.

It’s hard to admit when you’re wrong or deficient in something. And with raging inflation, climbing interest rates and record-high fuel prices, most businesses are surely facing economic headwinds right now. We’re no different. But this serves as a good reminder to not make the same mistake I’ve made, and forgo your business development needs. Even in times of economic struggle, it’s critical to reach out to prospective customers and let them know what you can do to help them. I know I’ll be redoubling my efforts in that regard.

Speaking of that, should you find yourself in need of more phone calls and clients, give us a call at 877-924-1543, and we’ll be happy to discuss what we can do for you.

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Have a small business? You need Pay Per Click Marketing…

by Internet AdvertisingOnline MarketingUncategorized

Small businesses are uniquely qualified to receive a great benefit from a properly designed and executed Pay Per Click campaign. PPC, also know as paid search or Google Ads (you can also run paid search campaigns on Bing Ads) is by far the most important marketing channel for almost ANY small business.

Why PPC is so crucial for your small business

Most people think of Google as a free search engine. Just type in what you’re looking for, and thousands of articles and businesses magically pop up in less than a second. Free of charge. Amazing!

But Google is a for-profit company, just like any other organization, and paid search is where they make their money. Have you ever wondered why the paid ads appear at the very top of the page? Now you know.

And that’s why it’s so crucial to get your small business at the very top of page 1 of Google. It’s where the phone calls, website contact forms, and new leads come from. Yes, SEO and Social Media Marketing have their place, but we look at those channels as secondary or tertiary options. Whenever we speak with a prospective small business owner, we’re always steering them towards PPC first.

A quick primer on how PPC works

Like SEO, paid search campaigns are focused on driving traffic through the use of keywords. Let’s say you’re a divorce attorney in Denver. You’re going to want to appear in those crucial top 3 positions for keyword searches like “divorce attorney”, “family law attorney”, “Denver child custody lawyer”, etc. And you’re going to want to reach everyone in your target area, which in this case is Denver Metro.

When someone sees and clicks on your ad, your budget is dinged for that click. Click prices can vary wildly by industry and keyword, but by and large keyword costs have actually come down over the years. The real success in PPC comes from writing attractive ads and ad extensions, finding the right mix of keywords that target the best prospects given the budget limitations, and creating a plan for the best times and days for those ads to show. That’s critically important, because most small businesses do not have huge marketing budgets. Those investments need to be properly allocated to achieve the best ROI possible.

But can’t I do this on my own?

The short answer is yes, you can. Google has a vested interest in accepting money from anyone who will pay them. Accordingly, you can set up a PPC campaign and start running it immediately. You could also do the electrical work on your home by yourself, or pull your own teeth. None of these things are advisable.

Chances are, as a small business owner you have a lot of your plate. You are an expert in running your business. You know your industry backwards and forwards. What you aren’t an expert in, and what you don’t have time for, is your digital marketing.

At DanMatt Media, we get that. That’s why we’re in business. We’re experts in Pay Per Click marketing, and we know exactly how to structure, design, and execute PPC campaigns for all types of small businesses. We know how to stretch budgets, we take smaller management fees than our competition (thereby putting more of your budget into the campaign, and not into your agency’s pocket), and we pride ourselves on offering the best customer service in the business.

If you’re looking for more customers, give PPC a try today.

 

SEO company Philadelphia

Running a Pay Per Click campaign on a shoestring budget

by Internet Advertising

We offer many different types of marketing solutions here at DanMatt Media, but without a doubt one of our most important channels is Pay Per Click (PPC). It’s one of the the only digital solutions that provides immediate results to clients. They can expect phone calls and leads right away, and most other marketing channels cannot make that claim. But Google has very much become a pay-to-play operation, and while organic search (SEO) remains a cost-effective and important channel, the coveted spots at the top of page 1 still belong to the paid search side of things. If you want new business right away, you go with PPC.

Pay Per Click marketing is an especially attractive option for service-based companies. Lawyers, roofers, plumbers, electricians, dentists, and others excel with this type of digital solution, as searchers actively use Google to find their businesses. As such, there is a tremendous amount of traffic and potential new business that is available via paid search. But as the popularity of Pay Per Click has risen, so have the click prices. And that presents a very big challenge for many of our clients.

Let’s face it, even successful and somewhat larger businesses do not have unlimited marketing budgets. There is always a limit to the amount of money that a company is willing to invest in any one marketing channel. For clients in the legal and roofing professions, prices for the most competitive keywords can easily top $100 per click. Even a 5-figure monthly budget can quickly be consumed with click prices at these levels. So what to do?

You need to mitigate these high click prices by creating a robust bid and keyword strategy that takes advantage of a mix of highly-desirable (and expensive) keywords and somewhat less competitive (and cheaper) keywords. You need to create an ad schedule that maximizes traffic at the most important hours and days of the week and forgoes the less important hours and days of the week. And you need to formulate a comprehensive negative keyword strategy to block invalid searches so that your precious marketing budget isn’t eaten-up by searches that will never turn into paying customers. If this sounds too labor-intensive and out of your league, it probably is. But this is precisely why you hire an experienced agency to manage it for you.

If you’re looking for placement at the very top of page 1 of Google, and the immediate leads and phone calls that it provides, you should give our Pay Per Click solution a try. You’ll be happy you did.