Are you new to PPC (Pay-Per-Click) digital advertising campaigns? Or, maybe the time and money you’ve invested in your PPC campaigns haven’t been paying off?

At Interactive Media Group, we have run hundreds of successful PPC campaigns. Take our advice: Here are the top 5 PPC campaign mistakes we see all the time that you and your business should avoid at all costs:

Launching a Campaign Without a Clear Strategy

It’s impossible to measure success without defining clear goals. Ask yourself these two questions: What is your primary goal for this campaign? Who is your target market to reach that goal? Then set up an action plan of specific tasks that will help you reach success.

Taking a “Do-it-all” Approach

As you may already know, PPC marketing is much more complex than it seems. You need to make sure that you have access to a digital marketing consultant.

Effective campaigns address the 3 basic types of PPC traffic separately: search traffic, display traffic, and social traffic. Delivering different ad experiences to each type of traffic increases your odds of success.

Failure to Identify a Realistic Budget

Think of your first few campaigns as tests. They may not be profitable, because you don’t know what will work and what won’t. Your budget shouldn’t be too low or too high. Your budget should be enough to test your campaign for future optimization.

Having Unrealistic Expectations

You may expect to see immediate results from your PPC ad campaign, especially if your website is optimized for SEO. Be patient for the first few weeks of your new campaign.

Not Testing Your Conversion Funnel

Make sure everything is working correctly by using test users. Have them experiment, use the site to perform tasks, and don’t forget to have them test the site from a variety of devices!

Need help from the experts? Contact us at i@theimgweb.com.

Social media allows so much information to be at our fingertips.

It allows business owners to connect with potential customers in new and exciting ways.

It also gives customers new ways to reach out and share their opinions, and it is inevitable that sometimes those opinions will be negative.

We want to make sure you know just what to do with the inevitable happens so that your customers keep coming back.

The first thing to do when you see a negative review is to take a step back. Never respond in the heat of the moment. Never indulge in an angry flash. Compose yourself and address the review in a cool, calm and collected manner.

Also, work to identify authentic bad reviews from those who are just “trolling” looking to waste your time. If a review is unnecessarily inflammatory, profanity-laden or unintelligible, odds are the reviewer is just targeting you for argument sake. In these situations, the best thing to do is just step back and let it go.

Once you’ve identified true reviews, start by acknowledging the mistake and apologizing. Sometimes a simple sorry is all the reviewer needs to hear. At the end of the day, consumers want to know they matter and that they are not just another number. Demonstrate this with a polite and sincere apology.

Even if it wasn’t your mistake, it doesn’t hurt to say that you feel sorry about the misunderstanding or bad experience.

Next, see if you can make it right. Is there something that can be done to fix it? If not, offer other perks or benefits, such as free shipping or a discount in the future. Also, make sure you’ve identified an accountability process to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Finally, thank the customer for taking time to leave feedback. Feedback gives you the tools you need to improve to become a better business.

Addressing bad PR is easier when you have our marketing team on your side. Contact us today to learn more about our services.

Digital marketing generally means getting the word out online about your brand and getting customers to see why they should buy from your business.

But in today’s hyperconnected world, your customers can also shape the reputation of your business online in (nearly) real time. This is very important as 77% of consumers read online reviews before making a decision.

While talking about how good your products and services are is of course useful and necessary, what your customers say about your company can also be used as a marketing tool. This is called Reputation Marketing. What makes this strategy different from other types is that it puts the “voice of the customer” as the central focus.

What your customers say about your business is not something you can control, buy, or make them do, but you can use the positive reviews they do leave to shape the narrative of your business’ reputation.

It’s amazing how many business owners are keen on running all sorts of online marketing campaigns, yet they don’t take the time to have their customers write a comprehensive review about their products.

Can you imagine how many of your “would-be customers” end up buying from your competitors, all because they couldn’t find any reviews about your product or service?

It’s essential for potential customers to know that others have used your business and had a good experience doing so, giving your business a reputation of trustworthiness.

Reputation marketing today is a must.

How do you get these positive reviews for your business and strengthen your reputation? There are many ways and we’d be glad to help.

Reach out to us at i@theimgweb.com.
Israel Farrer
Interactive Media Group

Your Customer’s Journey goes through these stages: Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. There’s no telling how long they stay in one stage before jumping to the next. Sometimes the progress takes months, and others the jump is almost immediate.

Many websites concentrate on the ‘Awareness’ and ‘Interest’ stage without signals toward a purchase while others focus on the ‘Action’ stage without providing sufficient information.

Interactive Media Group ensures that your website speaks to your visitor relative to their stage in the buying process. Does your website’s navigation and content address all of the needs of your potential customers in every step of their journey?

Navigational cues such as menu buttons, bread crumbs, overview of next steps, suggested readings, and calls-to-action must guide your visitors from whatever buying stage they are in and on whatever page and content they are currently on to the next logical and intuitive step.

This strategy requires a deep understanding of your customer, what they need and how you meet that need. This means knowing what information in certain media formats they need to absorb to learn more about your offerings in a way that will resonate with their motivation to buy. This strategy also requires getting rid of all possible barriers to buying, making the actual purchase process as smooth and satisfying as possible.

Contact me at i@theimgweb.com to learn how I can help you fix your website.

Israel Farrer
i@theimgweb.com

Anyone in the marketing game can tell you that online ads can boost your business’ visibility. But if you’re new to online advertising, you might be wondering, which platform is right for you and your business? And, where should you start?

One strategy is to start with the heavy hitters. Google AdWords is the top dog in search advertising with 79.79% of the global desktop search engine market share, according to Net Market Share.

Another powerful option is social media advertising. Based on recent lead generation and conversion studies on social media advertising, Facebook is best if your business is B2C: business to end-consumers. As a bonus, there are over 2 billion monthly active Facebook users worldwide, so the odds of finding new customers through targeted ad campaigns are very good.

For the business to business type (B2B), LinkedIn is your best bet. As you may already know as a LinkedIn user, this platform has 500 million users across 200 countries, according to Fortune.

If you’ve already explored these options, don’t worry! There are many more to choose from, each with their own strengths. In addition to Facebook and LinkedIn, social media marketing options (which get your business in front of their impressive user bases) include Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat.

Search advertising platforms get your business priority placements whenever someone makes a search. While Google AdWords is the leader in search advertising, Bing Ads is also a strong option. The widely used pricing model in search advertising is CPC (cost-per-click), where you only pay when your ad gets clicked.

The third main type of platform is display advertising. Google’s DoubleClick Media and Yahoo’s BrightRoll are two of many that fall into this category which provides ad placements across their networks of publishers.

There are many options and variables to consider. Feeling overwhelmed? We can help! Contact us today.