Considering the global reach of the worldwide Web, small business owners who launch online ad campaigns need to know whether their message is actually reaching the potential customer just around the corner.
Recognizing such concerns, a number of new companies focus on giving clients detailed, up-to-the-minute feedback, helping businesses to track the effectiveness of their online promotional campaigns.
Although a well-designed, effectively constructed Web site is a vital part of any online marketing program, the best site won’t work if customers don’t find it in the first place. Knowing how many people visit a Web site and how they got there is one of the key benefits cited by Court Cunningham, co-author of Local Online Advertising for Dummies and the CEO of Yodle Inc., an online advertising services company.
Big and small
Cunningham says large companies often have technical staff who track Web traffic and use the information they collect to optimize the advertising strategy. They can collect data on what search engines or online directories prospective customers are using to find their Web site. They can also track phone calls and e-mails to see how many people take the step from being prospects to becoming customers.
“Some companies are big enough that they’re going to hire someone who has that experience,” Cunningham says. “But if you’re a smaller business, you’re not going to be able to afford that person.” He believes that companies like his fill a niche: They offer smaller, local businesses access to the same kind of feedback larger companies can get from IT departments.
Nathan Hanks, chief distribution officer and a co-founder of ReachLocal.com, another online advertising firm, agrees. That’s why his company focuses on serving local businesses. “The Internet is the great equalizer for small businesses if they have access to the right services,” Hanks says. “There are millions of small businesses that haven’t had the option of using these kinds of cutting edge services.”
Although Yodle offers Web site design as an option, its primary services begin with the placement of ads and sponsored links through search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, and at local online directories such as CitySearch, Yellow Pages and LocalDirect.
That is just the first step. Once the ads and links are placed, the real-time tracking of customer response begins. Business owners can go to a dedicated site where they can see up-to-the-minute reporting on their Web page visits and the customer responses.
A dedicated phone number is used in all online advertising placed through Yodle so that calls can be routed through the company and relayed to the client. That allows software to determine customer response and to record each call so that the owner has a record of what customers were seeking and how employees responded to their requests.
Valuable data
The phone records allow business owners to determine whether their advertising is effective and what services or products are most important to potential customers. The tracking information on Web site visits can reveal where the advertising is working and how potential customers sought the information.
ReachLocal.com gives its clients access to a wide variety of up-to-the-minute online reports that do everything from listing Web site visits to mapping where calls come from. But Hanks say the company’s services go much deeper. The firm tracks all places where clients’ brands appear online, from their own Web sites and listings to reviews, comments and ratings on third-party sites.
“You don’t have just one site to be concerned with anymore,” he says. “You may have a presence on 10 sites or more. People may go online and find you on Yelp, Twitter or Facebook.”
The company’s newest services track pages where clients are mentioned and measure the impression those sites give. Hanks says it’s important for a business owner to know when potential customers have clicked a Like, Share, or Rating button.
In the past, a business might measure the effect of its marketing by counting phone calls or coupons. Now, Hanks says, “How many links point to you and the quality of those links is what’s important.”
Wave of the future
Cunningham says effective use of the Internet is important because that is where more customers are turning to find goods or services. “Eighty-two percent are looking for businesses online,” he says. “For half of them – 40 percent – that is their primary source.”
Despite that, he says, a third of small businesses don’t even have a Web site. “Our sense based on some of the work we’ve done is that only 20 percent or so are advertising online. About 50 percent of that is on Facebook.”
The content, design and ease of navigation at a business Web site are important when designing an online marketing plan, but none of that matters if potential customers are not arriving at that site. A key challenge of online advertising is to help prospective customers sift through millions of Web sites and find the business home page.
After that, it is up to the site to do its job by informing customers about the business’s services, qualifications and advantages. Cunningham says many business owners can find local advertising agencies or Web designers to provide those services, but expertise in maximizing a Web site’s visibility is harder to find.
‘Complicated world’
Between search engines, city sites, newspapers, television stations, local guides and directories, and other Web sites, there are many places a business owner can pay to advertise online. Add to that free services like Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, and the possibilities multiply.
“If you’re a small business owner, you don’t have the time to figure all of that out,” Cunningham says. “It’s a complicated world out there for people who are not familiar with it.”
Hanks says that’s why ReachLocal has individual representatives – internet marketing consultants – who work in person with clients in larger markets. Small business owners are used to working with sales representatives from traditional advertising media, and ReachLocal finds that in Internet advertising, personal service is as important as ever.
The services vary, but one priority Yodle and ReachLocal share is to get the client’s Web site to appear near the top of the page when a customer launches a search. Cunningham says it is important to find the right combination of paid and free advertising, banners and boxes on local media Web sites, and sponsored ads on search engines.
Although it might seem tempting to simply set up a free social networking page, Cunningham says that is not enough. “It’s a media-mix issue,” he says. “If you go back to the older forms of advertising, you could post flyers on utility poles at almost no cost, but you wouldn’t rely upon that alone.”
Data from Yodle’s customer base of 7,000 small businesses and professional offices shows that 40 percent of customer response comes from people who found clients’ sites with a Google search, while 5 percent comes from people looking on Facebook. Knowing that mix for an individual business is important when developing an online advertising strategy.
Both executives say the most important step is making sure that when the customer down the street looks for a service, your business shows up at the top of the screen, no matter what search engine, social networking site or online listing service that customer uses.
