Columbus Ohio web design company shows megaphone promoting a website

It's safe to say, unless you're a company like Coke, Nike or Apple, more people don't know you than do.

So how would you get on your customer's radar if they need what you do, but don't have your name on the top of their tongue?

There's probably different of ways to do that, but today we'll just cover one of the best, which is internet marketing, a sub-division of "search engine marketing," which would include social media.

Internet Marketing

This is what you probably know more generically as "Google AdWords." But since there more search engines, and more places to advertise, than Google, AdWords is just a part of internet marketing. Other search engines, of course, are the top three: Google, bing! and Yahoo, but there are also hundreds of others like MSNBC and every other news website. 

If you want your ads to appear on as many search engines as possible, you would need an internet marketing service, or an internet marketing agency to oversee this very in-depth process. Otherwise, you'd have to research all those sites that function as search engines, get the right keywords, the right cost-per-click, as well as monitor those dozens of search engines and see how they're performing. Which is why you need an internet marketing service.

This is, basically, how it works.

  • Step 1: The research starts with determining what keywords work for your product or service. And there are, no doubt, a handful of keyword phrases that are the top 5 or 6 that would work best for your company.
    Of course, those 5 or 10 keyword phrases are also likely the most expensive keyword phrases, costing $3, $5 or $10 per click, because they're the most searched keywords by your intended audience. They cost more per click because, lets say, they're searched for hundreds of times a month.
    But what about less popular keyword phrases that aren't searched as much, maybe 25 times a month, but might cost only 10 cents per click? Add up enough of those search terms and you might be looking at hundreds of searches every month for a lot less cost-per-clicks. You might be wondering how many of those search terms there are for a few cents per click. Speaking from recent experience, a home builder client of ours had over 500 keyword phrases that would work for them.  
  • Step 2: determine the geographic area you serve. Lets say you're a plastic surgeon, or home builder, and you want to reach people within 50 - 100 miles of your location. And that geographic area could be 1 to 3 million people depending on what city you're in or near. Extending the geographic area increases the costs, so there is a happy medium you'd want to settle on.
  • Step 3: figure our the budget, which is the formula of determining how many people you want to reach, the percentage of the searches you will show up for, and the number of phrases you want to show up for. You can reach 50% of the searches for the phrases, or 90%. The more you invest, the more people you reach. The monthly cost is calculated on a sliding scale, so it's relatively easy to see how much incremental costs extend the reach of your efforts.
    Depending on the area of the country you're in (bigger markets cost more, of course) the more it will cost to reach more of your audience. It's hard to pin point a cost without knowing your geographic area and how many people live within it, but there is a general range of middle markets of $1,500 to $4,000 per month to reach 75% to 80% of your intended audience.
  • Step 4: Pick the length of time you want to run your internet marketing campaign. Generally, services want you to run the campaign at least 6 months to get the benefit of internet marketing. This is similar to print advertising. Any magazine recommends running ads 6 times (over 6 months) to start registering with your audiences.
  • Step 5: Measure the results. Monitor and modify. This is a not a "set it and forget it" program, and this is where you need the expertise of an internet marketing service. They have sophisticated algorithms that track which keywords are working best for you based on the costs. They can focus your monthly investment more towards the better performing keywords, instead of the ones not working as well. So it's not as abstract as social media: with internet marketing, you can track exactly which keywords and clicks are sending people to your website.

Lets talk about cost.

You might think this is all very expensive, but lets look at it compared to print. Think about how much you would pay to have a print ad designed and run in a local magazine. You might pay $1,500 to have the ad designed, and another $1,000 to $3,000 for a full page ad placement, per month. So lets say over 6 months, a full page ad might cost $14,000.

Now think of it as what a new client might be worth to you. If you're a home builder or plastic surgeon, and a new client can be worth between $10,000 and $100,000, would it worth spending $1,500 to $3,000 a month to get one or two new clients per month? (That's a rhetorical question...we know the answer.)

These are the basics, but of course there's more to the details that can be customized just for you. And a good internet marketing service has probably run thousands of pay-per-click campaigns within your industry both in, and out, of your market, so they have that experience they bring to the table.

This is something to look into now, especially if your competitors aren't using this type of service. It will give you the advantage they don't have.

You'll be getting new customers with your new into internet marketing program that should make it pay for itself.

We're a Columbus Ohio website design firm living in the Short North, and are ready to help your company with its marketing, whtether it's Columbus marketing or your reach is across the country.