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The latest buzzword in the advertising world is upgrade.  From iphones, to HDTVs, to high speed Internet service, everyone needs an upgrade.  If Beyonce says so, it must be true!

Perhaps your search engine marketing campaign needs to dance to a new tune.
Is your online media matched to your latest business objectives, messages, products and services; or is it out of date and ready to be archived with your 45’s, 8-track tapes and VCR?

Today’s business economy is changing at the fastest pace ever.  So what should you do?

To begin, take a step back.
•    Review your website.
•    Take a good long look at your search engine marketing campaign.
•    Is your message being consistently communicated via your website, ads and landing pages?
•    Is your offer still current?
•    Are you getting a good return on your investment?

Now take a look at your current business plan. What are your 2009 business objectives?

If you’re search engine marketing campaign doesn’t project your current business goals, it just might be time to upgrade.

You don’t need to completely reinvent yourself, but you can build your brand through
better focused and more targeted approaches that are matched with your current business
goals and strategies.

Here are some recommendations to help you move ahead.

1)    Revise your website copy so it is current.  Perhaps you can afford a redesign, but if not, make sure your messages come through loud and clear and reflect your latest business goals and offers. Remove outdated or unnecessary copy.
2)    Refresh your site’s search engine optimization to include both new and best performing, relevant keywords. Google has a free keyword tool that can be helpful to find good keywords with high search volume.
3)    Consider developing a mini website (no more than 10 new pages).  This is a great way to focus on a high priority area of your business.  A mini site should be easy to navigate and can be optimized for specific search terms.
4)    Add video.  A product demonstration or a testimonial can go a long way to help customers see the value of your products or services.  Make is short; keep it simple; reinforce your messages; and make a compelling offer. Add it to your home and landing pages.
5)    Update your click campaign to make sure your ads reflect your latest offers.
6)    If applicable, set up local business ads to more precisely target your audience.  You could try different ads or offers for each location and test the results for best performance.
7)    Include trackable phone numbers on your website and in your advertising campaigns to measure results.
8)    Add Google Analytics to your website so you can gather trend data.  This is a simple improvement to help you measure and grow your business.

The best upgrade is one that is current, consistent, integrated, focused, targeted and measurable.

And the beat goes on….

If your company hasn’t felt the pinch of a slowing economy yet, you are one of the lucky few.  However for many businesses, the onset of a recession has led businesses looking for more cost effective ways of getting their message to their target market without breaking the bank. 

Businesses are side-stepping this recession by bringing their products and services online, where the cost of maintaining a website is only a fraction of what other mediums charge.  But having a website is only half the battle. If you do not market online or do so in a limited capacity, you should consider reexamining your integrated marketing campaign to include allocations for search engine marketing.  Ideally this would include both search engine advertising and search engine optimization. 

Let’s first consider search engine advertising.  According to IDC analysts (www.idc.com), online advertising grew 27 percent in 2007 and is unlikely to be affected by a continuing downturn in the economy.  What’s even more encouraging is the number of adverting dollars spent during the fourth quarter of 2007 which topped “$7.3 billion for the fourth quarter of 2007, about 28 percent more than the same period in 2006….” IDC findings continued.   Given these overwhelming statistics, it becomes apparently clear that online advertising is growing despite a recession.  The reason for this is simple.  It gets results! 

Let’s turn our attention to search engine optimization.  The good news is that if you have a website, you already have one key component.  The bad news is that it’s unlikely “search engine optimized” unless you or somebody else properly optimized the website for search engines.

Thankfully, there are numerous resources and companies that have considerable experience in this growing field.  However, buyers should be aware that not all search engine marketing firms or individuals are the same.  In fact, search engine giant Google warns against hiring a “search engine optimizer” that uses unethical practices to manipulate search results and, in addition, has a search engine advertising certification process.

The process of search engine marketing can vary greatly depending on the skill of the agency or individual.  For example, properly search engine optimizing a website will involve researching the right keywords to integrate into the website along with a strong linking campaign that will favorably increase the likelihood of being found for those keywords. 

In short, every business should have a search engine marketing plan.  Ideally, the search engine marketing plan should encompass the company’s business model, objectives, and return on investment goals. This will lay the foundation for how much visitor traffic and search engine optimization is required to meet the above goals.  One last point to keep in mind is that the internet is a dynamically changing landscape that never sleeps.  Search engines are constantly innovating and competitors are hungry.  What might be working today may not be working tomorrow.  Have a solid search engine marketing plan backed by a qualified agency or individual to manage the plan and your business will reap the benefits at your competitor’s expense.

Labor Day is behind us, which can only mean that Christmas and New Years is just around the corner.  Whether you are ready or not, these holidays along with others are big search engine traffic generators.  For search engine marketers, this means that planning is essential to be as successful and effective as possible.

What I find truly find perplexing is that although everyone regards “Christmas” as the grand poobah of all holidays, Halloween tends to go under the radar by some.  From experience as a parent, I can tell you that kids are just as ecstatic over Halloween as they are for Christmas.  Plus, if you think it’s all about the candy…it isn’t.  Kids love the whole idea of Halloween starting from throwing up the decorations, watching their favorite movies, to choosing what they want to be for the big night.  Retail outlets are littered with entire Halloween sections that are nearly impossible to navigate through.  To reinforce a suspicion, I ran some common holiday keyword terms in Google Trends for fun to see where Halloween ranked among holidays.  To my assumed inclination, Halloween was second in line only to Christmas.  In addition, Halloween traffic has slightly increased while Christmas traffic as flattened and declined.

For search engine marketing, this means that SEO and PPC campaigns could be developed or revised from the year previously.  In addition, keyword research can be done to determine what this years hot products may be such as depicted below.  Just check out the top 10 KEI keywords from Wordtracker:

Well, it looks like Gene Simmons and Slipknot are big winners…at least for this year.  (Side note- I didn’t even know what Slipknot was until I Googled it) Ok, I know what you are thinking.  What about the tricks or treats?  Using Google Insights for search, amazingly candy wasn’t in the top ten.  Not saying that this tool is perfect, but you could argue that candy was hidden in the treats.

Regardless, the main point from the above analysis says that if Halloween isn’t in your search engine marketing arsenal, perhaps I have made an argument that it should be.  Now if could only figure out what I want to be this year…

Last week marked the launch of a total new search animal named cuil. Developed by ex Google and Altavista engineers, cuil promises to be…well “Cool.” Although I’m not sure exactly where I first read about cuil, I quickly clicked on the link to visit this new revolutionary search engine. With eager anticipation, I began doing searches that I knew our company ranked for in Google. First “business blogs”, yielded mixed results. Currently, we rank #2 in Google (www.iblogbusiness.com) for this keyword term. However, as the picture depicts below, our site isn’t ranked above the fold.

This raises an interesting question. Does cuil rank sites left to right or top to bottom? Because below the fold, we rank #3 or #6 depending on how you look at it. Since most search engines read top to bottom, I guess I would count it at a 3, but cuil’s layout certainly doest draw my eyes down there. Additionally, Google returns over 83 million web-pages for this keyword, where cuil only delivered a mere 83 thousand. Since one of the main points this engine claims is number of pages in its index, i was puzzled to see such a low number by comparison.

What I really found disappointing was that i couldn’t find our parent company TMA E-Marketing on the first page by doing a simple search with our company name “tmaemarketing.” Shouldn’t that be a dead ringer to find your website or am I missing the point here? Nevertheless, cuil has been bombarded by mixed results from the entire blogging and web community. From what i have gathered, most of it doesn’t seem to be all that positive. But given the competitive search engine landscape, I wasn’t expecting a newcomer to be welcomed by the red carpet. Needless to say, it will be interesting to see how cuil fares in the long run.

On a completely different note, I bumped into a website called Hulu. Now I’m not sure if i have been just living under a rock, but it wasn’t until recently that i ran into this website that has one of the most compelling business models I have seen in a while. In my defense, I know I’m not the only one, because I asked several other youngster’s if they have come across this website and nearly everyone said no.

Why i found this site to be so intriguing is that its the first of its kind that features full featured TV shows and movies. As a Family Guy nut, It was love at first site. As you probably have encountered when searching for videos online, most copyrighted content that’s worth watching is a no-no that that has been ripped down for copyright infringement. Not the case with Hulu. You can watch your favorite shows because they have been sponsored by companies that inject commercials during your video session. Sure, we would all love commercials to disappear, but I’ll take them as long as i can watch free TV online. Now only if my iphone (which I ordered on Saturday) would get here!

When I was a salesperson in the consumer electronic industry, there was an old saying that went “We’re not in the business to save the world from bad hifi.” I always hated this saying because most of the places i worked sold high-end audio and video equipment, which in effect meant that what we were selling was typically better than our competitors. Additionally, we sold A/V gear based on the experience one would have versus how costly it was. But if you still don’t totally get this old saying, it basically meant that sometimes it wasn’t the best idea to try to sell the highest end equipment because its not always the best solution for everybody.

A typical example that a sales manager would give us was the power of branding. If we had a customer that came in and asked for a particular brand like “Bose,” he questioned the effort one would have to exert to try to sell that customer anything but for what they asked for. After all, the brand wasn’t cheap to begin with and the fact that the customer asked for it meant that they were already familiar (and was already sold) on that brand.

This scenario isn’t to far from the truth from what happens in our industry either. Potential prospects may not understand all of the Internet marketing mediums that exist or care to understand them. A vetran user of e-mail marketing for example, may not want to hear all the benefits of search engine marketing. Sure, a targeted search engine marketing ccampaign may serve them best to their needs, but after all, that wasn’t what they asked for.

This of course doesnt fit every senario out there. But, I do beleive that its up to us to determine the best solution for our clients. However, if you just consider for a second that the client may have also done some research or is experienced in a particular medium, it may not just make sense given the time and effort to try to convert them into another medium. Do you remember how you felt when you went into one store for a particular item and came out with another? Sometimes you may even wonder if you made the right choice.

The main point from above is you should size up each situation and sell what you think your customer would get good results AND feels confortable buying. Its much easier to sell a service or product to an individual that has already purchased them in the past. Additionaly, their experience and “call objective” shouldnt be ignored because in thier point of view, its been tested and well thought out.

So the next time a customer asks you your opinion or wants a particualr medium, just remember who’s paying the bills and if it makes sense to sell against an uphill battle. Whether its the best solution or not may not matter. What really matters is that the customer is happy with the solution.