Tag Archives: #bbsdigmarketing

What is Google AdWords?

Google AdWords is an advertising service provided by the search engine giant Google. Google AdWords markets your advert in the Google Search Engine and the affiliated sites. They do this by the use of a text ad that appears when people search phrases which match the adverts and the link appears with “sponsored link” on it.

A screen shot of a Google search with certain companies using Google AdWords to rank high on the search

The system is a “pay per click” system which means the advertiser can dictate where the advert appears through bidding for a series of phrases. But part of the benefits of Google AdWords is the pay per click element, the advertiser only pays when someone clicks on the ad to visit the website.

The benefits of Google AdWords

In this section of the blog we are going to discuss the key benefits of the marketing method.

1. AdWords is Measurable

Measuring the success of a marketing campaign can be very difficult, especially in traditional marketing such as television marketing (Bonoma, 1985). The new era of marketing online is becoming increasingly easier to measure the success or failure. Google AdWords is one of the most measurable pay per click advertising platforms out there. Google AdWords is transparent, and provides a large amount of pay per click metrics that allow the advertiser to see what works and what doesn’t (Gabbert, 2012). For example the business owner can use Google Analytics, and this can be set up in a matter of minutes. Demonstrated by Google in a tutorial on YouTube:

(Google Ads, 2012)

Start-ups will be new at AdWords, thus at the beginning it will be a trial and error process to establish what words are relevant and which words provide the highest conversion rate. Thus, this benefit will provide the business with a tactic to measure the conversion rates easily, and efficiently.

2. AdWords is easier than search engine optimisation

Google AdWords is usually easier to use in comparison to search engine optimisation strategies. Search Engine Optimisation is often difficult and requires a team of well experience and well trained people to do a good job (Webb,  2011). Start-ups will more often than not, not be able to afford search engine optimisation specialists. This can be outlined by Trond Lyngbo, outlining the difficulties which businesses face when approaching the challenging task of Search Engine Optimisation, supporting the advantage of AdWords being easier than SEO.

3. Search Engine Optimisation is often slow

As previously stated search engine optimisation usually requires a team and also requires highly trained employees. For new businesses and websites, search engine optimisation can require a large budget and a large time scale, and it can take months for one to see positive results from search engine optimisation strategies (Vegh, 2010). In comparison to search engine optimisation, AdWords can work straight away for new business and the business can see results in a short period of time. Start-ups want to start earning money as soon as possible to break even, search engine optimisation frequently takes a longer time than AdWords.

4. AdWords can be a cheap method

This benefit is not to say that it is always a cheaper marketing strategy. Large companies such as WallMart, PC Mall and Amazon spend millions of dollars on AdWords. Google provide the buyer with a ‘no visit, no fee’ method, i.e. the pay per click element of the advertising. They also provide the buyer with a budget, and the investment is totally up to the buyer. Start-ups will frequently have a small budget as they will have no cash left over from previous profitable years, thus the method of controlling your budget is necessary for a start up.

5. Is AdWords traffic better than organic traffic?

This is the final benefit we are going to consider in this blog. Obviously traffic is great, whether it is organic or AdWords, although, businesses want a successful conversion rate which is going to make the advertising worthwhile. Libbey outlined that pay per click advertising, i.e. Google AdWords converts better than organic traffic (Libbey, 2009). However, the debate is still on going, which is the topic of another discussion, and it may be dependent on the industry of which the business is working in.

The negatives of Google AdWords

1. Paying for clicks

This negative relates to the final positive in the benefits section. When a business starts up they may be paying up to £6 per click to get people to their website. Some clicks can actually be in the range of £60 per clicks. However, the key issue with this negative is that whenever someone clicks on the advert, the business still has to pay Google, despite the fact that they may have clicked straight off of the website. This point also relates to the effectiveness of a businesses landing page, and the relevance of the search to the landing page. However, the principle negative of this point is that, despite a successful landing page, or an unsuccessful landing page, the business still has to pay, even if they do not make a sale.

2. The Competition is fierce

As it was previously stated that AdWords can be a relatively cheap medium of advertising, however, it may not be worthwhile if the business can only invest a small amount of cash. Large companies can afford to invest significant sums into AdWords advertising, compared to smaller companies (Kenney, 2015).  As a start-up competing with large companies it is going to be increasingly difficult in every way possible, however, AdWords provides a very difficult task as start-ups do not have the budget.

3. You may not need to reach the millions

One of Google AdWords’ key sales point is that you can reach the millions, as with any digital marketing campaign, supposedly. However, for some markets AdWords is not suitable, for example the target audience are not regular users of google, such as elderly’s. Consequently, another use of marketing may be more relevant.

Conclusion

Throughout the course of writing this blog we have attempted to establish the benefits and negatives of using Google AdWords for a business which is new, or new online. The course of research has provided me with five key benefits which are applicable to small businesses. It can be observed that there are more applicable benefits to using Google AdWords, however, the negatives should be taken into consideration when a small business is considering using the marketing method.

The negatives which should be taken with extra caution is whether the AdWords is relevant to the businesses market, and to keep within your budget. The first negative is very relevant, although Google AdWords does not guarantee customers, it does guarantee traffic to a certain extent. The next step is up to the business, the landing page should be relevant to the search (Meerman, 2007). However, this is a discussion for another day.

The final words is a word of advice for start-ups, Google AdWords is an excellent marketing method which has proved to be very successful for a number of businesses and one would advise any start-up to use it. However, the negatives should be taken with extreme caution. Start-ups should perform a lot of research to establish whether the method is relevant to the market, whether they have the budget for AdWords to be successful and what types of phrases and words are relevant to make the marketing method successful.

References

Elisa Gabbert.  (2012) ‘Why use AdWords? Here are 10 reasons.’ http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/12/03/why-use-adwords [Accessed 30/03/2015]

Webb, Hillary. “Search engine optimization.” (2011).

Vegh, Aaron. “Search Engine Optimization.” Web Development with the Mac®(2010): 221-239.

https://www.google.co.uk/adwords/ [Accessed 30/03/2015]

Libbey, N. (2009) ‘True or False: Organic Traffic Converts Better than PPC’ http://moz.com/ugc/true-or-false-organic-traffic-converts-better-than-ppc [Accessed 30/03/2015]

Kenney, R. ‘Google AdWords – Destroyer of Small Business’ https://concept5.com/google-adwords-destroyer-of-small-business/ [Accessed 30/03/2015]

Scott, David Meerman. “The New Rules of Marketing.” (2007).

Google Ads. (2012). Video: how to link your AdWords and Analytics accounts. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKrU7jExa70. Last accessed 21 April 2015.

Lyngbo, T. (2013). 6 SEO Challenges Every Business Owner & Marketer Must Contend With In 2014. Available: http://searchengineland.com/6-challenges-every-business-owner-marketer-must-know-about-seo-in-2014-170386. Last accessed 21 April 2015.

What is twitter?

Twitter is one of the most popular social networking platforms out there, with 645,750,000 registered users and an average of 58 million tweets a day, as of March 25^th 2015 (Huffington Post (2015)). Consequently, one can comprehend why twitter is one of the most popular social network platforms there is.

In consideration of the statistics previously outlined, it is evidential why companies invest such a large amount of resources to the marketing campaign on twitter.

Twitter for marketing purposes

This section will be a brief discussion regarding twitter as a marketing channel.

Twitter is obvious an excellent way to communicate with potential customers, Duncan and Moriarty (Duncan and Moriarty (1998, p.8)) outlined that interactivity between the company and the customer is a “hallmark of the paradigm shift in both marketing and communication”. Twitter as a marketing strategy has enormous potential, such as reaching millions of people, the communication with individuals on a personal level, and the ability to interact with customers easily. It is clear that one of the most important benefits of twitter is the interactivity which companies can achieve with ease.

Twitter solves a key problem companies have, the ability to give customers feedback. Before the use of twitter, companies responded to customers via email, phone, mail and other slow means of communication. Twitter has provided an alternative from using these means of communication, by replying to customers with a short response, instead of a lengthy and slow response. The BBC (18 September 2013) performed an experiment testing the response time on twitter, and the quickest response was in just 3 minutes. This is just one way of outlining the excellent use of twitter in interacting with customers.

Companies will use twitter in different ways in consideration of their sector, industry, geographical markets and other factors (Burton & Sobelava (2011)). In the next section we will see this in practice by outlining some of the best companies which have used twitter as an excellent interactive tool.

The success stories

Victoria’s Secret

Victoria’s Secret utilises twitter to interact with its customers with the hashtag #AskAnAngel. This hashtag campaign has given hundreds of thousands of people to interact with the face of the brand.

Warby Parker

Warby Parker interacts with its customers through twitter competitions. Using a hashtag #whereswarby

Wendys

Wendy’s a restaurant chain in the US has created a page for a type of burger they sell in their restaurants. This specific page has competitions where the individual has to tweet the page.

Nike

Nike interacts with individuals by posting motivating tweets.

KJ Wines

KJ Wines is a winery which interacts with its customers frequently, mainly regarding questions about wine.

Disney

Disney interacts with its customers by playing games such as requesting the individuals to fill in the blanks in their most well-known songs.

Conclusion

In this blog we have outlined how a twitter can be used as an outstanding interactive tool. Twitter’s potential as a marketing strategy is far reaching, this blog has outlined a number of ways a company can interact with the individual twitter user. Thus, can be used by businesses as an interactive tool to humanise the business (Singh, 2008)

References

Burton, Suzan, and Alena Soboleva. “Interactive or reactive? Marketing with Twitter.” Journal of Consumer Marketing 28.7 (2011): 491-499.

Duncan, Tom, and Sandra E. Moriarty. “A communication-based marketing model for managing relationships.” The Journal of marketing (1998): 1-13.

Sing, T, Veron-Jackson, L and Cullinane, J. (2008) Blogging: A new play in your marketing game plan. Business Horizons. Vol. 51, Issue 4. Pages 281-292

“Blogs are not an elective. They’re a prerequisite” (Baker and Green, 2005)

Blogging has blown up recently, individuals are creating and making an extremely good living off of blogging. However, can companies use blogging as a successful marketing strategy?

This blog attempts to extract the benefits from blogging within a commercial context for small businesses. The blog will advise the reader on how to benefit from the use of blogs and provide examples of good and bad blogs which real businesses have used.

How it all works

To put the questions in context it is necessary to explain what a blog is and how they work. Business blogging is a marketing method which supposedly improves a business’s online presence.

However, that definition gives rise to two questions:

1. What is ‘blogging’?
2. And what do you mean by an online presence?

Blogging is a post which belongs to your websites “blog”. These posts are usually a written piece regarding anything the writer wishes. Although this definition of ‘blogging’ is ambiguous, this blog aims to develop this definition further.

An online presence is self-explanatory, it is the ability for a your business to be visible online, this could mean various things, such as being at the top of search engine searches, on people’s social media platforms and also create a buzz around the products online. (Dobele, Toleman & Beverland (2005))

How is blogging as an individual different to blogging as a business?

Now we have outlined the meaning behind blogging, the next question which occurs is how blogging as a business differs from blogging as an individual.  One of the biggest differences which can be extracted is individual bloggers usually blog as a hobby, it was previously stated that some individual bloggers have earned a living, and sometimes a very good living, off of blogging. However, the majority of bloggers are blogging because they care about what they blog about as a hobby.

Alternatively, businesses blog to market their business. Marketing has developed significantly since the internet has blown up, thus the introduction of marketing on social media, email marketing, search engine optimisation and so on has been introduced. Marketing through the medium of blogs has also increased, and it has proven success for a number of companies, if I direct the reader to the opening sentence from Baker and Green outlining blogs are a prerequisite. Thus outlining, the importance of blogging as a business.

Why should a business blog though?

We have outlined the difference between blogging between individuals and businesses, and Baker and Greens opinion on blogging. However, this section is going to further examine the benefits of blogging from a business perspective.

The first benefit which we are able to outline is that they humanise a faceless business, it is an interactive tool for the business. (Singh, Veron-Jackson and Cullinane (2008)) Businesses are often seen as big corporations, even when they are not a multi-national corporation, this benefit gives customers an insight into the company. For example an online company where the potential customer will almost never meet any of the employees, gives the customer a sense of connection to the employees writing the blog, it will have the same effect as excellent customer service in a shop. This benefit is also closely linked to brand loyalty, when a potential customer, or reader of the blog has a positive experience then it can turn into brand loyalty. Firms can empower customers by enabling them to have a role in the business, and this in turn can lead to brand loyalty. (Nardini (2005))

DeFelice (DeFelice, A. (2006b) outlined that firms can also use blogs to stay relevant to their customers, i.e. an old company keeping up with the developing marketing strategies. An example of this can be shown from the suit makers ‘Scabal’, a company which was established in 1539 has a blog and uses it to its full potential. Subsequent to analysing their website, their target market is male aged 30-60, however, the use of a blog will undoubtedly introduce new customers to the company who are interested in menswear and tailoring.

The previous benefit leads on to the next benefit nicely, blogs provide a way to bridge a generational gap as previously outlined with the example of the company ‘Scabal’. Another example which exemplifies this benefit is the company Southwest Airlines. Their blog attracts readers from college students to retirees. These examples outline how a blog which interacts a reader can attract attention from a market which the small business didn’t even expect to ever attract.

Blogging is global! The internet provides a global platform, thus writing a blog provides a platform which is worldwide. Consequently, it is clear blogging is a low-cost method to create opportunities to increase revenue to your business. Every time the business publishes a blog post, the business creates more opportunity to be found online, consequently increasing the online presence.

Although there is a significant amount of blogs, there are limitations to blogging. Companies have a lack of control over blogs, and that blogging can result in brand bashing (Murphy, 2006).

Blogs also require a lot of commitment and continuity, blogs are used as an interactive tool and having a lack of commitment can counteract all the positives which were once created from the blog.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

This blog post has now identified what a blog is, how blogging differs between individuals, and the benefits of blogging for a business. However, blogging is easier said than done, a number of businesses have attempted and failed, however some have exceeded all expectations.

The first blog to identify is ‘The Body Shop’. It is common knowledge that the body shops blog has been a raving success. They have a far reaching blog with competitions, skin care tips, how to guides and campaigns. However, it is not only their blog which has contributed to the increase of sales. Other bloggers also contribute to the success of the blog, bloggers such as ‘Zoella’ blog about their products.

The Virgin Atlantic blog is also a company which utilises digital marketing strategies. The Virgin media group know they’re audience very well and the type of content they enjoy reading. It is also the content which is something of a success story, the bloggers have interesting concepts of every day stories, the products and services virgin provide are arguably not very exciting. However, their blog is something to get excited about.

Instagram is another successful blog, they engage with the readers and really interact with the audience. Instagram blog about current affairs and global events, which everyone in the world can connect with. They also use the ‘Weekend Hashtag Project’ which invites the readers to use the hashtag which everyone else who partakes is using.

This blog has identified three blogs which have been very successful, these are not the only successful blogs online. However, these blogs are in a range of different sectors and provide the reader with a varied view of what a successful blog looks like.

Although the companies outlined are huge companies, the principles still apply to a small business. The readers of this blog can learn from the positive points regarding the three blogs above, and the principles of blogging as a marketing channel.

How should a business blog then?

We can withdraw various principles from the three examples provided, such as in the case of Virgin. They know their audience to the best of their ability, and they understand what type of content they want to read. Instagram provide a fantastic example of how to engage with their audience and the body shop outlines how to provide excellent content.

Top 10 tips

1. Write interesting and original content.
2. Engage with your readers.
3. Establish your goals as a blog.
4. Research your audience.
5. Be committed to posting frequently
6. Develop your blogs brand
7. Market your blog
8. Build an audience and a following.
9. Make your blog shareable
10. Measure your blog’s performance.

Is blogging for you?

I think it is clear to see that blogging is for every business, it has a long list of benefits as we have established. A blog will help you reach the capacity your business can work at, however, blogging is a lot of work, and nevertheless it has significant rewards.

References

Baker, Stephen, and Heather Green. “Blogs will change your business.” Business Week  2.05 (2005).

Sing, T, Veron-Jackson, L and Cullinane, J. (2008) Blogging: A new play in your marketing game plan. Business Horizons. Vol. 51, Issue 4. Pages 281-292
Nardini, J. (2005). Blogging 101. Frozen Food Age, 53(12), 32— 33.
DeFelice, A. (2006a). A new marketing medium. Customer Relationship Management, 10(1), 32—35.

Murphy, C. (2006). Blogging: Waste of time or corporate tool? Retrieved August 12, 2006