PPC Advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or paid search advertising involves a company paying to have its ad appear on search results pages of search engines. PPC advertising providers such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing show sponsored ads, or paid search results, for most search queries. A consumer intending to purchase a microwave oven for her new modular kitchen may enter a query “microwave oven with convection and grill for home use,” seeking cost and feature information. A chain of electric kitchen appliances would likely then appear as a sponsored result. It is often observed that users with a high intention of making a purchase click on sponsored ads. This is especially true of highly transactional goods such as clothing, electronics, and consumer foods. 
PPC advertising has a significant impact on consumer metrics such as brand awareness and brand image, even among users who do not click on the sponsored advertisements. Image ads tend to be more effective in exerting positive impact and increasing visibility in search results. A consumer seeking a new microwave oven may choose to review multiple electric kitchen appliances advice pages before making a decision.
A business can increase the reach of its website using PPC advertising in the following ways:
Choosing relevant Keywords–keywords are the search terms used by consumers to tell search engines about the specific product or service they are interested in purchasing. For businesses looking for maximizing their reach using PPC or search engine advertising, the focus must be on bidding on keywords that are highly relevant to the search queries that are common in their business. Businesses can make use of their historical data and competitor data to determine the popularity and relevance of various keywords.
The price of keywords can vary greatly, from pennies to several dollars depending on popularity, demand, and the value to the advertiser. The ad’s “quality score”, rank and popularity of the keywords among the competitors determine the price an advertiser has to pay. The quality score is the search engine’s way of determining the relevance of an ad to the searcher by evaluating each keyword’s relevance to the business and its landing page, as well as other factors. The rank of an ad is determined based on its cost-per-click (CPC) and its quality score.
Choosing relevant Geography and Time–search engines have enabled business to analyze their past data to determine where their online customers are located and the best time to reach them. Based on this data and other internal research, businesses can choose the desired geography and time of day in which they should advertise their products and services for optimal results. For small businesses that cater to a local audience, geography-based targeting is especially important and helps ensure that their ads remain relevant.
Profiling the audience–Businesses must understand the profile of their target audience and create “user personas” that will help them identify the relevant ads for their customer base. A young age group may be attracted to video ads, while a more mature audience may prefer an image ad. Audience profiling may also help businesses identify the time of day when their target audience is most likely to make a purchase.
Selecting appropriate Ad sizes–Advertisements displayed on search engines and other third-party sites are available in different sizes, and the digital marketing team must customize their marketing content to the size of the ad being displayed.
Testing various Ads– Search engines allow businesses to experiment with two or more ad options in order to identify the more attractive one, commonly referred to as A/B or multivariate testing. A business can divide its marketing budget between two or more ads to be displayed to a similar audience throughout the day if it is unsure about the most effective advertising message for its products or services.
Customizing Language–businesses can also customize their ads based on the language preference of their target audience to make sure the intended marketing message is relevant and reaches audiences around the world. 
To learn more about PPC advertising, visit www.smstudy.com

Original link: http://www.smstudy.com/Article/PPC-Advertising

Marketing for a Flat World

Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author made a strong case for the democratization of the global marketplace in his 2005 book, The World is Flat. Friedman named ten factors that had contributed to the leveling of the world’s economic playing field. One of the most important noted by Krugman was the advent of the Internet and its unprecedented opportunities for connection. In many ways, modern-day marketing is a microcosm of Krugman’s “flat world” where a similar “leveling” of has occurred.  

At one time (not so long ago), traditional media outlets, such as print publications and radio/TV stations received the lion’s share of all marketing dollars. They were the only game in town able to reach large swaths of potential consumers and, therefore, enjoyed a special place in the marketing hierarchy. Ad space was limited in each of these traditional marketing channels and in turn, the cost of ad space (or time) was pricey. So pricey, in fact, that it often discouraged or prevented smaller companies from participating. But, as we know, this is no longer the case. 

Compare our current media “ecosystem” to 20, or even 10 years ago, and it becomes clear that as the Internet has grown, so have less expensive, more diverse channels for marketing distribution, opening up the opportunities for smaller outfits to compete with larger companies. All these new Internet-enabled marketing options that have led to the democratization of marketing can be called fragmented new age marketing.
According to SMstudy’s Digital Marketing, fragmented new age marketing supports new, small brands with much smaller budgets and it also allows for more direct targeted marketing.
The book explains that “while mass media marketing is less targeted and primarily focused on affecting emotional attitudes about the brand, new-age marketing is data-driven and focused on driving specific calls to action.”

Fragmented new age marketing allows for traditional avenues, but also includes newer channels such as websites, mobile and social media and within those categories there are numerous economical marketing options. Regardless of company size or limited budgets, there’s some form of new-age marketing that is within reach. And most likely, there’s numerous avenues available even if the budget is nearly $0. For example, online ad networks such as Google, Yahoo! Search and Microsoft AdCenter often offer promo codes that reducing their costs to as low as $25.
In addition, there are a variety of ways to approach marketing in the digital age that are not only free, but break through the limitations of traditional media and allows for greater public engagement. Many relying on creativity and a more open, responsive and organic approach such as connecting with topic bloggers or forging relationships with experts.
As author David Albert notes, “There are many ways to position yourself as an expert: guest blogging, participating on Q&A sites like Focus.com, Quora.com, LinkedIn Group Discussions, etc.”

Fragmented new age marketing recognizes that today’s marketing is, in a sense, open source, offering the ability to grow and build on marketing ideas and opportunities made possible through technology. And now with the demise the high cost of doing business, the only limitations are the limits of the creative collective. A more democratic global “marketing-place” is here!

Sources:
"Top 10 Tactics To Marketing Your Startup Launch With $0", David Albert, Junw 2, 2014 http://www.builtinchicago.org/blog/top-10-tactics-marketing-your-product-launch-0
The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First History, Thomas Friedman. 2005
SMstudy Guide ®, Digital Marketing, Pg. 8

Psychology, Sales and the SMstudy Guide

Could a beer seller’s story about their purple wisteria saving the day help you?
When the story is an example of using psychology and emotion-driven sales, it can and probably should. London Pride accomplished this with their advertisement featuring a uniquely ancient wisteria plant: “The purple genus has been steadily scaling our brewery walls since 1816. It’s the oldest in England.”  It seems the Brits value their past, their national pride and their wisteria.
“London Pride beer uses emotion-driven marketing … that hooks the reader with a memorable story about something Londoners are familiar with and proud of,” says Kath Pay in Leveraging Psychology in Digital Marketing.




A Guide to the SMstudy® Sales and Marketing Body of Knowledge (SMstudy® Guide), makes a similar point: “The most popular blogs choose topics that are of interest to a large community. Successful blogs have something interesting, useful, or creative to share, and do that sharing with an engaging style.”
How does one leverage psychology in his or her marketing efforts? SMstudy® Guide’s book Marketing Strategy explains one of the ways: “Psychographic segmentation is primarily used for consumer markets and involves segmenting buyers along one or more psychological variables including, but not limited to, the following—Attitude, Personality, Values, Fears, Lifestyle, and Life stage (e.g., early childhood, youth, young adult, newly married, married with young children, married with teens, empty nester, elderly and retired).” This type of segmentation begins the process of researching and analyzing a target market’s psychological profile.
“To make the path to conversion clear, you must understand the psychological cues that prompt action, and then consider the entire customer journey, using both implicit and explicit directional cues,” says Pay.
How can you find the cues that prompt consumer actions? The SMstudy® Guide helps here, too, suggesting the use of behavioral segmentation and explaining, “There are five variables that can be used for behavioral segmentation.”
Needs: Users are segmented on the basis of their needs related to a product. Here it is important to understand the users’ category and brand purchasing motives, their value systems and their perceptions in order to draw a composite image of each user and his or her needs.
Consumption Behavior: Purchasers may not be the direct consumers or may not be the only consumers for a variety of products. Therefore, consumption patterns for these products should be considered separately.
Purchase Behavior: Users are segmented on the basis of their purchasing patterns. Some of the patterns are non-user, potential user, first-time user, one-time user (also referred to as “one and done purchasing”), repeat user, former user, product/brand loyalty-based user and early adopter.
Communication Behavior: Users are segmented on the basis of how much they communicate about the product with others before, during and after purchasing. In this respect, opinion leaders are particularly influential as they are knowledgeable about, or are regular users of, particular products; are very vocal about their views regarding such products; and command the attention of other potential customers. In addition to examining how these users communicate, it is also important to understand how they prefer to receive communication. For example, what types of media do they consume?
Consumer Purchasing Roles: Consumers can be categorized based on their roles in the purchasing process. Individuals take on one, several or all of the following roles in the purchasing process: initiator, influencer, decider, buyer and user. When segmenting based on consumer purchasing roles, businesses will often target influencers rather than buyers in an effort to connect with those with the most influence on the purchasing behavior of the group.
Looking at the traits that put consumers in each of these categories provides cues to their motivations and the directions those motivations will lead them.
Using some practical suggestions from www.smstudy.com can help leverage psychology and make people think that buying from you is a good idea. Cheers.


Acknowledgement: This content has been borrowed from http://www.smstudy.com/Article/Psychology-Sales-and-the-SMstudy-Guide