3 Reasons Not To Choose An Internet Marketing Company
Everyone loves lists. There are entire sites dedicated to top ten lists of everything from skin lotion to punk rock bands. I recently realized that I haven’t ever written anything in list format. A terrible, empty feeling began to overtake me. So while I may have missed the Hypercolor shirt trend when I was a kid (don’t remember Hypercolor? Shame on you!), I’m the kind of guy that will buy one off Ebay now just to say that I didn’t miss the trend completely.
This could be me!
Sad? Perhaps. But I’m going to make it count.
Speaking of counting, I figured I’d run in the opposite direction with my first attempt at “listing”. Having inherited a healthy dose of skepticism over the years, I figure it’s time to tell you what NOT to look for in an Internet marketing company, whether it be ad placement, pay per click management, search engine optimization or even web analytics. So let’s get to this list, shall we?
The first reason not to choose an Internet marketing company: They’re not business people. There are a million people out there offering search marketing services in particular, promising you number one rankings faster than you can microwave a bag of popcorn. First off, never trust someone that tells you this. Second, what’s the ultimate goal of their service? Clicks? Visits? How do they devise their keyword strategy? Do they understand your market? Do they have tangible business experience? If they don’t understand business, or if they don’t take the time to understand the uniqueness and complexities of your company, they likely won’t get you the results they want.
The second reason not to choose an Internet marketing company is if they lack a “face”. One of the first clients I worked with at Netvantage Makreting told us about some large faceless organization (that shall remain nameless) who sent them their SEO report each month showing some keywords went up, and some keywords went down. No explanations, no rhyme, no reason…just ranking reports. When they called to try to contact someone in regards to some further explanation, they would get redirected endlessly to someone who didn’t know or really seem to care who they were. You need a person or people that you have a direct relationship with that will act as a partner. If a company doesn’t offer a dedicated individual for your account, this is a huge red flag.
The third reason not to choose an Internet marketing company is a lack of transparency. I’ll be blunt. Much of what we do is NOT rocket science. Managing Google AdWords doesn’t take a degree in neuroscience from Stanford (and may not help at all, actually). It does take time, resources, inclination, and a pretty rounded marketing mind, however. I have always been straightforward with our smaller clients when I tell them that if I’m really doing my job well, and they have available time, they could eventually take over their campaign. Clients should be able to look at their raw data, otherwise, it’s too easy to cook the books or paint rosy pictures. If you can’t look at raw analytics, PPC data, or activity logs for SEO work, how will you hold this firm accountable. Whether you have any desire to ever look at this information is beyond the point. If there is any significant hesitation about transparency in information (aside from figuring out the best way to provide it to you), proceed with caution.
Of course it makes sense to do your standard due diligence when seeking out a vendor, but often times Internet marketing is outside the standard comfort zone of a lot of SMBs. This list should make a nice edition is you aim to trim down your list of potential providers.
Another seminar in the bag
So the 11 on 11 event at Claddagh’s went down without a hitch, and our sincere thanks to everyone who made it out. General feedback was great and we look forward to holding another one in the near future! If you’d like to keep up with upcoming events, check out the seminars page on our site, or go to our news section so you can sign up for our newsletter.
A special thanks to Claddagh’s for the hospitality and the great food. We’ll have pictures up soon and we’ll be sure to share them.
Political reputation management via paid search
I wrote an article for American Chronicle before the end of the election titled “The Politics of Paid Search - Combating the Obama and Palin Rumors“. In it, I discussed how Obama’s camp did a far better job squelching the rumors largely spread via e-mail proclaiming many unsavory “facts” about the various candidates. As I’ve continued to see interest in this topic, I decided to dive deeper and see why people have spent so much time discussing how the Internet was utilized in this campaign.
One of the most prevailing rumors spread via email was that Obama was a Muslim. As i stated in my previous article, Obama’s team had put in place a paid search marketing campaign which appeared to be broad matching searches containing “Obama”, “Barack”, and “Muslim”. In the sponsored search listings, two Obama ads ran unopposed. The first as more of a catch-all, titled “Researching Barack Obama?” and a second targeted add proclaiming simply, “Barack Obama: Not Muslim” leading to his brilliantly assembled Fight the Smears site, which provides answers countering all of the misinformation which his team constantly updated.
So how important was this site? Well, if my numbers mean anything, quite a bit. Initial keyword volume research on Google shows an average of 226,616 searches per month pertaining to Obama and the word Muslim. Considering Google accounts for about 70 percent of search traffic now, overall monthly search traffic likely eclipsed 300,000. It would appear that the word of mouth and email campaigns on that subject raised quite a bit of interest. While I am not privvy to the click throughs from the paid search campaigns, Quantcast reported monthly traffic in October to the Fight the Smears website of 747,000 visitors.
Perhaps just as telling from the Quantcast numbers is the traffic to the Fight the Smears site’s affinity for factcheck.org, a site aimed at shooting down both candidates’ loose use of facts. That site showed monthly traffic of 2.1 million visitors. What does this mean? Well, it would appear that a growing number of Americans are utilizing the Internet as a reference tool. While I’m certain it drives the candidates crazy trying to deal with unfounded attacks spreading like wildfire via email and otherwise, it must comfort them to see that people are taking it upon themselves to utilize available resources to ascertain what is fact and what is fiction.
While Obama’s team pushed the envelope to new heights in utilizing technology as a strategic and fundraising tool, it will be interesting to see how politicians leverage paid search management, and the Internet in general, as a powerful tool. With more independent organizations making information readily available to the public, it will be interesting to see if politicians are held increasingly accountable for their less than truthful rhetoric.
Meaningless web analytics reports
In the grand scheme of innovative technology, some things outlive their utility yet are grandfathered into assumed relevance almost infinitely. Web analytics, still in its formative years, has many such instances and most of them are found in the realm of reporting. By now, you probably know that “hits” are a completely useless metric, but in truth, many other mainstays of the WA vernacular bring little or nothing to the table themselves.
So as an homage to one of my favorite Mitch Hedberg jokes:
I saw a commercial on late night TV, it said,”Forget everything you know about slipcovers.” So I did. And it was a load off my mind. Then the commercial tried to sell me slipcovers, and I didn’t know what the hell they were.
Here are three relics of web analytics terminology to forget (or at least re-think):
- Exit rate. News flash, people are going to leave your site. Paying close attention to this data in and of itself is useless. If you’re your data or looking at pass through pages (step 2 of a shopping cart for example), you MAY have something. Bounce rate is a better measure, typically.
- Average time on site. Before you have a conniption, let me explain. There are sites and situations when this statistic doesn’t tell you much. First, many javascript analytics providers measure time on site by measuring the time between loading page one and page two. So, at an aggregate level, if you have 40 percent of your traffic only viewing one page (this happens a lot on blogs, in particular), your data is going to be severely skewed.
- Visitors. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…Yes, we want more traffic. But what kind of traffic? Are visitors new? Are they returning? Does an upward trend in traffic correlate to a higher conversion rate? Traffic does not always mean business, so this metric without context is meaningless.
Okay, I feel I’ve done my duty for the day. Not only that, but I got to thinking about Mitch Hedberg and I’m now in a better mood.
If anyone has any other suggestions on past their prime metrics, please share. I’m all ears.
What’s in the blender…
I know it’s been some time since my Google Analytics bit, where I promised the follow up with a review of Yahoo Web Analytics/IndexTools, and I just want everyone to know that it’s in the works! Other things that I’ll have coming down the pipeline will be some very straightforward tips for setting up your Google Analytics correctly (I’m no programmer, and you won’t need to be to use them, either).
Things have been busy here at Netvantage, lots of new opportunities and we’ve added some new customers to our ranks (welcome aboard!)
In other news, Joe’s hockey season gets under way tonight (he coaches hockey, for those that don’t know), so make sure you wish him and his team luck on their coming season.
