Happy New Year

Branding Thoughts wishes you a safe and Happy New Year!

See you in 2009!

Paid and Organic Search Complement Each Other

Speak to any online advertising expert or agency and chances are they will tell you how much more beneficial it is to use both organic and paid search together. There are obvious advantages to both paid and organic search, but leveraging your campaigns off the other, you can build a powerful search campaign.

Using paid search, you have more control over your listing including placement, ad copy, and landing pages. With these options, you can run a lot of tests to determine what works best for you. Paid search also allows you to gain search visibility immediately whereas organic visibility can take months to appear. Some of the disadvantages of paid search include cost. Every time your ad is clicked on, you are required to play regardless if you sold something or gained a lead from them. Paid search can easily become very costly if not managed carefully and on a consistent basis.

Organic search on the other hand comes at no cost. Users can click you listing as much as they want and you don’t have to pay a single cent. Users are also more inclined to click on organic listings than they are to click on sponsored ads. Disadvantages include the fact that your ranking is not guaranteed and it is a long term and continual process to see results. Organic search includes a lot of research and fine-tuning and also involves factors (ie. algorithm changes) that you have no control over.

However, with some careful planning, you can utilize learnings from organic for paid search and vice versa. Paid search allows you to quickly gauge what type of traffic you would get for a certain keyword. If you are getting a significant amount of traffic for a certain term and a decent amount of orders or leads from it, then it would be wise to target that keyword in your organic search. Also, if there is a particular keyword that has very high competition in the natural listings, it may be worthwhile to attract traffic for sales and leads through paid search instead.

Many agencies and professionals have also done studies on how much more likely a user is to click on your site if you have top placements in both paid and organic search. Paid search can also be used initially to push traffic to newly developed organic portions of the website. Using both paid and organic, you can get a good view of the long-tail terms users are looking for. This can help you greatly when developing new landing pages and copy specific to those users.

These are just a few ways paid and organic search go together hand-in-hand. If you’re looking for ways to improve your paid and/or organic search, then employing some of the tactics mentioned above is a great place to start.

Contour Mania Contest Winner

About 2 months ago, we had a contest for customers and others who were interested in helping us create a new design that would go on our Contour Pen. National Pen specializes in full color designs ready-to-use on pens, mugs, magnets, key chains, and more. With a variety of industries and themes to choose from, we wanted our customers to help us develop one for universal use. The one we chose as the winner fits well for our business. Congratulations to Mark Brace and his winning design.

As a special gift to our participants, we also announced a few runner-ups where we really enjoyed the look and concept.

We really enjoyed reviewing everyone’s submission and thank you for your time and effort.

Easily Monitor Your Reputation Online

It’s important to know what people are saying about your company, but searching for your brand name online can take hours and if you want to check up periodically, you’re faced with search results you’ve already seen.

So how can you find out what people say about you online? Create a Google Alert and have new mentions of your company sent directly to your email. It’s easy to do, just visit their Alerts website, then type your company name in quotes in the search box. Select what kind of results you want and how often you’d like to receive them, and enter your email. Hit “Create Alert” and you’re done!

Every time a new site uses your search term, you’ll get notified via email. Of course, if you have a very generic name and pull up too many search results, you may want to try including your city name or your industry in the search as well.

Image Courtesy of keso

The Power of Coupons - Distributing :: Part 3

Welcome to part 3 of our coupons series. We’ve already discussed offers you may provide and how to print them. Now you’ll need to distribute them. So how do you do that without spending an arm and a leg?

• In person. Place coupons in store or in shopping bags. The problem with this is, with the exception of referral coupons, it can’t help you get new customers.

• Mailing List. You can always mail or email existing customers with coupons. Again though, this will not get you new customers unless you send a referral coupon.

• Door to door. This may be time consuming, but canvassing is mighty effective. Leaving coupons on car windshields, house door steps, etc. is an easy way to bring your message to the masses.

• Mailing Lists. This covers both mailing and email lists. While it costs money, the advantage is that targeted direct mailings are some of the most effective ways to distribute coupons.

• CO-OP Mailings. You know those envelopes you get stuffed with coupons from different businesses? That’s what they did. You share the costs of mailing with other businesses in the group. Get in touch with these groups for a low-cost way to distribute your offer and share the expenses.

• Newspaper. This one also costs money, but you can reach a lot of people. It is a great way to target people in a specific geographical area.

Now you know how to use coupons to boost your business…so get to it!

If you have any tips or questions about coupons, please post them in the comments section.

The Power of Coupons - Printing :: Part 2

Now that you’ve decided to use a coupon and what kind of discount to offer, let’s learn about printing options.

• Do it yourself. Printing yourself is easy. You can print off hundreds of your own coupons on your PC or take a trip to the local copy store. It’s easy, but you risk customers making their own coupons, which can suddenly turn 100 coupons into 10,000. This can work positively as viral marketing, but be sure you can handle that sort of discount.

• Have customers print them. This is the easiest and the only free way to print coupons. This method requires online or email distribution. The downsides are the same as printing yourself, people can try to manipulate the coupons or print off too many.

• Pay a professional to publish them. For most small companies, a professional printer is not the best option unless it is included with your distribution method. For example, a distribution group or a newspaper will print your coupons for you.

• Print them on promotional products. An underused method of coupon distribution. These may not be free, but they offer you additional advertising, can’t be manipulated and people will want them –even if they don’t need coupons.

However you print your coupons, don’t forget to add an expiration date, like “offer valid through August 31.” This creates a sense of urgency around the offer, enticing customers to act now and it protects you from discounting longer than intended.

The Power of Coupons - Planning :: Part 1

How many times have you used a coupon at the grocery store for a product you've never tried before?

Coupons are a great way to get customers to try your service or product. They can also “woo” your competitor’s customers to give you a try. If you have a new product, service or an overstock, try offering a coupon to draw attention and sales. You can also minimize the impact of a price increase with a coupon -people won’t realize there was a price hike when excited about a coupon.

Different offers work better for some businesses than others. Which type of offer will work best for you?

• BOGO. The always popular “Buy One –Get One.” This is a customer favorite. This offer works best to clear out surpluses or to sell things with huge markups. If your item doesn’t fit into either category, this probably isn’t a good discount for you.

• Freebies. This discount involves giving people something for nothing. You distribute coupons offering a free goodie to anyone who stops by. This coupon works best for grand openings and businesses that heavily rely on foot traffic.

• Percentage off. Offering a percentage off discount lets you control the sale. Larger discounts attract more attention. This can also push people to make larger purchases so they can stock up while the sale is on. 10-20% discounts can bring in a lot of customers.

• A small amount off an item. This is similar to the $.50 off soup coupons you see at grocery stores. With this sort of a coupon, you have to ask yourself, “is this a discount I would take advantage of?” If you are offering too small a discount and your answer is no, either increase the coupon value or don’t bother with it at all. A good coupon drives people to use your products or services, a mediocre one gets tossed.

• Pay only {discount cost}. Rather than showing the money they save, show the price they pay. This can be surprisingly more effective than offering a small discount on a popular item. If the price sounds good, consumers are likely to think the coupon is more valuable than it really is.

• Referrals. Print coupons with blank lines for people to write in their names. Give instructions on the coupon that you will give a small discount to everyone who uses the coupon and that you will give everyone with their name on the coupon (the referrer) a small credit towards future services.

Now that you have a good idea about what kind of discount you’d like to offer, it’s time to decide how to print it. A lot of people skip past this, but it is an important step in creating coupons. Stay tuned.

Image courtesy of drh